Gong Weimin, Men Dan, Zhu Lanting
The tourism industry has a major impact on regional green transformation and substantially drives ecological protection and high-quality development in the Yellow River Basin. The spatiotemporal patterns of the tourism economy and urban green development efficiency, and their underlying mechanisms, are systematically examined in this study using spatial analysis, mediating effect models, and the spatial Durbin model. The results show that (1) both the tourism and green development sectors are characterized by spatial agglomeration with notable path dependence; (2) the tourism sector directly promotes green development and indirectly contributes through government ecological governance, industrial structure optimization, and environmental regulation; (3) the spatial spillover effects shows a mismatch between direct and indirect effects; (4) the impact of tourism economy on urban green development exhibits pronounced regional heterogeneity, with the degree of influence following the pattern: upstream> middlestream> downstream. However, the upstream area shows a negative spillover effect. Overall, this study reveals the intrinsic mechanisms and spatial effects through which the tourism economy influences urban green development. It offers both theoretical insights and practical implications for promoting the integration of culture and tourism and ecological co-governance across the basin.