Theoretical And Empirical Studies On Tourism Cities' Growth From The Perspective Of Coupling Development

Abstract:In the post-industrial era, against the background of internetization, ecologicalization and amalgamation, tourism cities are faced with open development environment and diversified development demands, which pose new challenges to the traditional development philosophy and strategies of tourism cities. In reality, tourism cities are confronted with dilemmas between supply and demand, between scale and profit, between speed and quality, between government and market, between economic benefit and social and environmental benefit, between homogeny and heterogeneity, and between competition and cooperation. It is a demand both in theory and in practice to explore what tourism cities should develop and how to develop, to evaluate tourism cities' development level and capacity, and to guide the development direction.This paper starts with the discussion of tourism cities' growth subjects, growth momentum and growth features, and uses the Coupling Theory to study the interaction among tourism cities' development subjects, thus explaining the mutual promotion and constraint relationship in the coupling development of tourist industry and city; secondly, based on the coupling mechanism of tourism cities, this paper builds a theory model of tourism cities' growth capacity from four perceives:growth foundation, growth strength, growth environment and growth effect, and constructs corresponding index system from five first-class index of tourist attractiveness, tourist development capacity, city support, tourists' satisfaction and internet popularity; thirdly, by using the structural equation model, this paper conducts empirical studies on45cities with developed tourist industry across the world, and on the bases of verifying the connection among variables, this paper proves and applies the structural equation model; fourthly, by using standard deviation, Theil coefficient, etc, this paper analyzes the growth differences among tourism cities in four areas including Asia Pacific, Europe, America, and East Asia and Africa, and discusses their development phases and growth models; finally, focusing on Beijing, the paper uses structural model and data to compare it with15first-class comprehensive tourist metropolises in the world, and comes up with growth path and suggestions based on its constraints in development.The conclusions of this research include:Firstly, the growth of a tourism city is a four dimensional system of growth subject, growth resources, growth environment and growth space. Compared with destination competitiveness, the growth of a tourism city emphasizes more on the connection and interaction of all elements in the system, which demonstrates the advantage of the coupling development of tourism and city;Secondly, the growth space of a tourism city can be the city's physical space, and the stereoscopic space, internet space and information space that connect the tourists generating region and destination, but also can be understood as the distance between current status and future target. The multiple dimensions and the limitedness of the growth space make it key in a tourism city's sustainable development to seek for quality growth, instead of speed and benefit.Thirdly, the growth of a tourism city is not only demonstrated in the independent development of the subjects including tourist industry, city, and tourists, but more importantly in the coupling development of the tourism city system and tourists, and of the tourist industry and the city. The interaction between tourist industry and the city will vary with the changes in time, place and demands, which further decide the development phase and model of the tourism city.Fourthly, this paper proves the connections among tourist attractiveness, development capacity, tourists'satisfaction, the city's support and internet popularity, and further proves the relationship between these indicators and tourism city's development strength (development index in short). The results show that tourist attractiveness, development capacity, and tourists'satisfaction have direct influence on the development index, and the city's support and internet popularity have indirect influence.Fifthly, the paper verifies that the regional difference is the main reason that affects overall difference. The development is relatively balanced in American and European areas; whereas the differences are huge in Asia Pacific, and East Asia and Africa areas.Finally, the development index shows the coupling development of tourism city system and tourists. Based on this, this paper divides the evolution of tourism cities into phases including quality coupling, intermediate coupling, passable coupling, and coupling reviving (or declining), etc. In terms of coupling model, it can be categorized into coordinate model, lagging tourism model and lagging city model,etc.On the basis of the research framework of coupling development, through empirical data studies of foreign and domestic tourism cities, this paper verifies the theory framework of tourism cities'growth evaluation and the interaction among those dimensions, enriches the theory of tourism cities and theory of development, and provides operation framework for city planning, management and marketing.