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Arid Land Geography ›› 2025, Vol. 48 ›› Issue (11): 2053-2061.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000-6060.2024.679

• Tourism Geography • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Spatiotemporal evolution and obstacle factors of the coupling coordination degree of tourism efficiency and urbanization: A case of the core section of the “Belt and Road”

WANG Shengxia(), LI Maolan(), LIU Ruiting   

  1. College of Business Administration, Lanzhou University of Finance and Economics, Lanzhou 730101, Gansu, China
  • Received:2024-11-04 Revised:2025-01-02 Online:2025-11-25 Published:2025-11-26
  • Contact: LI Maolan E-mail:wangshx@lzufe.edu.cn;13993164515@163.com

Abstract:

The interaction between tourism and urbanization has become increasingly significant, and the coupling coordination of tourism and urbanization is crucial for the promotion of the high-quality development of regional tourism economies. Using the coupling mechanism of tourism efficiency and urbanization with the Super-SBM model, the entropy method, the coupling coordination degree model, and the obstacle degree model, this study explores the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics and the obstacle factors of the coupling of tourism efficiency and urbanization in a core section of the Belt and Road (six provinces, including Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia) from 2000 to 2022. The results show that: (1) The average tourism efficiency of the six provinces is 0.73, which is low; the overall level of urbanization is growing steadily, with obvious inter-provincial differences. (2) The coupling coordination degree of tourism efficiency and urbanization in the six provinces has evolved from a near imbalance to primary coordination, with a spatial pattern of distribution that is higher in the southeast and lower in the northwest, and with a center of gravity showing an offset southeast-northeast-southwest pattern, with the degree of agglomeration to the southeast region gradually increasing. (3) The key obstacle factors constraining the degree of coupling coordination of tourism efficiency and urbanization are total tourism revenue, total number of tourists, total postal and telecommunication businesses, number of students in general higher education institutions, and the amount of employees in the tourism industry. The results of the study provide a scientific basis for the high-quality synergistic development of regional tourism and urbanization.

Key words: tourism efficiency, urbanization, coupling coordination, spatiotemporal evolution, obstacle factors