Hanchi Zhang, Zhanfu Luo
The coordination between tourism development and the ecological environment, together with its spatiotemporal differences, is of considerable practical significance for the high-quality development of tourism in ecologically fragile regions. Based on panel data for 14 prefecture-level cities and autonomous prefectures in Gansu Province from 2010 to 2019, this study constructed an evaluation indicator system for the coupling coordination between tourism development and the ecological environment and applied a coupling coordination model to measure and analyze its spatiotemporal evolution. The results indicate that: (1) tourism development in Gansu Province fluctuated overall during 2010-2019, with differentiated trajectories across prefecture-level units due to variations in the quality of tourism resources, tourism market size, and levels of economic development. The composite level of the ecological environment improved gradually, although regional disparities remained evident. (2) Most prefecture-level units remained in a state of moderate or mild imbalance throughout the study period, and the overall improvement in coupling coordination was limited. Jiuquan exhibited a relatively high level of coordination and reached the barely coordinated stage in both 2015 and 2019. (3) Spatially, the coupling coordination degree was generally higher in western Gansu and lower in the east, and this spatial pattern remained relatively stable during the study period. The findings suggest that the coordinated development of tourism development and the ecological environment in Gansu Province still requires more effective synergy among resource carrying-capacity constraints, ecological conservation investment, and regionally differentiated development strategies.