Spatial and temporal analysis on tourism economy in the Yellow River Basin

Abstract

This report mainly focused on the Yellow River Basin as the study area, and analyzed its evolution process from both a spatially and temporally approach between the years 1996 to 2008. It has utilized several methods to do the quantitative analyses and evaluations on the data from 9 different provinces in the Yellow River Basin, such as Standard Deviation, Gini Coefficient, Variation Coefficient, and Location Quotient Indexes. Based on the result of the report: the gap on the absolute differences during this period of time has increased gradually on the regional tourism economy while seeing an initial declining trend followed by an afterwards increases on the relative differences. From 1996 to 2008, Shandong, Shanxi, and Inner Mongolia provinces had always been the tourism prosperous regions and with a rapid growth; simultaneously, Qinghai, Ningxia, and Shanxi have been in this underdeveloped tourism economy stage, but needed to strengthen and further develop their investments on tourism and marketing solutions. In recent years, the growth has led Sichuan province changing from a tourism developing zone to a more matured tourism region. Yet, Henan province has been the opposite: the growth weakened over the years. If the tourism economy continues to develop under the present circumstances, the gap between different the regional tourism economies will get larger. At the end, the report has pointed out some suggestions and solutions on how to narrow down the regional tourism economic gap, with the aim of accelerating the sustainable growth on the tourism economy in the Yellow River Basin.