Measuring the island tourism development sustainability at dual spatial scales using a four-dimensional model: A case study of Shengsi archipelago, China

Abstract

Measuring the island tourism development sustainability is critical for utilizing the island tourism resources, improving the island's socioeconomic prosperity, and maintaining its ecosystem but challenging due to the complex factors and their spatial heterogeneities. In the present study, a model was established for comprehensively measuring the island tourism development sustainability. The model is composed of four dimensions, namely, tourism attractions, ecological resilience, traffic accessibility, and accommodation capacity, and their spatial heterogeneities at dual spatial scales, i.e., evaluation unit and single island scales. An island tourism development sustainability composite index (ITDSCI, 0–5, dimensionless) was proposed to integrate the four dimensions at the dual scales. Remote sensing, field survey, and statistical data served as the data source, and the geographic information system was used to realize the spatial exhibitions of evaluation results. An important island tourism destination in China, Shengsi Archipelago, was selected to demonstrate the model. The results indicated the distinct heterogeneities of ITDSCI at the dual spatial scales. At evaluation unit scale, ITDSCI ranged from 0 to 5 with 2.21 as the mean value. Within each of the dimensions, point and line resources contributed much more than area resources to the tourism attractions; anthropogenic influence played a dominant role in changing the ecological resilience; and the external and internal traffic were both crucial for traffic accessibility. The four dimensions jointly determined the ITDSCI, with traffic accessibility and tourism attractions making larger contributions than the remaining two dimensions. At single island scale, ITDSCI ranged from 0 to 3.45 with 1.39 as the mean value; it distinctly increased with the increase in island area and shape complexity. Larger islands generally had more point resources and better traffic conditions, while islands with more complex shapes and higher isolation usually contained more line and area resources, respectively. Then, spatial mismatch analyses among the four dimensions revealed the urgency to improve the ecological resilience, and suggestions for coordinating the four dimensions were proposed in scopes of the entire archipelago and the contrasting sub-regions. The empirical study verified the non-collinearity among the four dimensions and validated the effectiveness and applicability of the model in comprehensively measuring the spatial heterogeneity of island tourism development sustainability.