On the Conceptual Framework of Tourism Complex Research from the Perspective of the Theory of Complex Adaptive System

Abstract

Tourism complex, a term initiated by China's scholars, is derived from the original terms of building complex and urban complex. At present, the research on the tourism complex is still in the initial stage. The main research agents involved are geography, industrial economics and tourism, while there are only a few interdisciplinary studies, and the concept of tourism complex remains to be explored. Based on this, this paper attempts to make a comprehensive overview of the tourism complex. From the perspective of interdisciplinary, it explores the internal relationship and logical system of research on tourism complex among disciplines, so as to form a research paradigm that can be commonly accepted by various disciplines. It is concluded that, first of all, most of the researches on the tourism complex in various disciplines are mainly descriptive studies, but only a few quantitative studies and most of the theoretical studies are summarized from practice. The theory lags behind the practice in the course of development so that the theoretical results obtained at this stage are unable to play a role in guiding the practice. Secondly, the tourism complex is a complicated system. So the system of its concept can not be built by merely piecing the concepts in various disciplines together. Instead, it is necessary to introduce the theory of complex adaptive systems for comprehensive reconstruction and analyze its formation process and mechanism in a more systematic way. In a word, based on the overview of the studies on the concept of tourism complex at home and abroad, this paper introduces the theory of complex adaptive system to construct a theoretical framework of interdisciplinary research from the perspective of system theory, so as to make up for the deficiencies in the research from a single discipline perspective. It is hoped to enrich the study of the tourism complex and provide a unified paradigm for further study of related disciplines.