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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Environmental Health and Exposome
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1569684
This article is part of the Research Topic Greening Urban Spaces and Human Health, Volume III View all 7 articles
Comprehensive Evaluation Model of Ecotourism, Economic Development and Ecological Environment-Taking Shennongjia National Park as an Example
Provisionally accepted- Zhoukou Vocational and Technical College, Zhoukou, China
This study takes Shennongjia National Park as a case study to systematically explore the interaction between ecotourism and economic development in national parks and its impact on the ecological environment. This study constructs a comprehensive evaluation model comprising three indices: the Ecotourism Development Index (ETI), Economic Development Index (EDI), and Ecological Pressure Index (EPI). By integrating the coupling coordination degree model (D) and the Spatial Durbin Model (SDM), it quantifies the synergistic effects and spatial interaction mechanisms among these systems. Based on multi-source data from 2016 to 2022, the following key findings are revealed: (1) Economic driving effect of ecotourism: Ecotourism development has a significant positive impact on regional economic growth (elasticity coefficient 0.68, p<0.01), but the surge in tourist numbers has intensified local ecological pressure, particularly manifesting as vegetation degradation and water quality decline in core scenic areas such as Shennongding. (2) Spatial dependency characteristics: The global Moran's Index indicates significant spatial positive correlations among ecotourism, economic growth, and ecological pressure, showing "high-high" or "low-low" clustering patterns. LISA clustering further reveals that tourism hotspots like Muyu Town are high-value clusters, while areas like Xiagu Township exhibit low-value clustering due to resource limitations. (3) Dynamic evolution of coupling coordination: From 2016 to 2022, the coupling coordination degree of the three systems improved from near imbalance (D=0.48) to intermediate coordination (D=0.75). However, the ecological-environmental lagging contradiction (ETI>EPI) has become prominent, primarily due to tourist overload and insufficient funding for ecological restoration. Finally, based on empirical findings, development pathways and strategies are proposed to achieve the coordinated development of ecotourism, economic growth, and ecological environmental protection.
Keywords: National Parks, ecotourism, Economic Development, ecological stress, Coupling coordination degree, Spatial econometric modeling
Received: 01 Feb 2025; Accepted: 27 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Cui. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Xin Cui, Zhoukou Vocational and Technical College, Zhoukou, China
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