An Empirical Study on the Environmental Carrying Capacity of Marine Resources Based on the Entropy-Weight TOPSIS Model

Abstract

Yang, S.; Ren, L., and Gou, L., 2022. An empirical study on the environmental carrying capacity of marine resources based on the entropy-weight TOPSIS model. Journal of Coastal Research, 38(5), 1037–1049. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. The sustainable development of the marine economy has drawn increasing attention from the countries of the world. To realize the compatibility between marine resources and environmental carrying capacity and marine economic development, it is important to fully understand the environmental carrying capacity of marine resources and its evolutionary trends. After an in-depth discussion on the definition of marine resources and environmental carrying capacity, an assessment system was constructed, incorporating 28 indicators that cover the development of the marine economy, marine resources carrying capacity, and the marine environmental carrying capacity. Following this, the entropy-weight Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) model and the kernel density estimation method were used to assess the environmental carrying capacity and internal carrying capacity of Qingdao's marine resources from 2007 to 2018. The empirical results show that the environmental carrying capacity of marine resources in Qingdao presented a declining trend between 2007 and 2010, followed by a noticeable upward trend from 2011 to 2014, and then another downward trend in 2015. These findings suggest that both the carrying capacity of marine resources and environmental carrying capacity are still under threat, as indicated by a low capacity assessment score overall. Specifically, whereas the development of the marine economy progressed steadily, marine resources carrying capacity fluctuated, reaching a maximum value of 0.3251 in 2007, and the overall marine environmental carrying capacity presented a fluctuating upward trend, which was generally consistent with the changes in marine resources and environmental carrying capacity. The results show that the model can consider many factors simultaneously, evaluate the marine resources and environmental carrying capacity, and provide valuable insights into the study of marine carrying capacity and policy implications for achieving sustainable development in the marine sector.