A Risk Evaluation Model Of Tourism Development In The Process Of Resource-exhausted City’s Transformation

The development of resource-based cities depends on resource exploitation and primary processing (mainly non-renewable mineral resource). Due to the non-renewability of natural resources, resource-based cities will inevitably go through a stage of resources exhaustion. The industrial transformation of resource-exhausted cities is the key to their sustainable development. The domestic and international practices show that the transformation of resource-exhausted cities should not simply take a re-industrialization road. Instead, combined with the development of substitute industries, these cities should improve urban economic, social, environmental and other aspects and speed up the flow of information and people, thus taking a road of new-type industrialization. Tourism has become an increasingly popular alternative industry at home and abroad with its unique advantages.This study aims to assess the risks brought by tourism development during the transformation of resource-exhausted cities when choosing tourism industry as their alternative industry. This analysis identifies four categories of risk factors (industrial risk, operational risk, competitive risk and relationship risk) and establishes a risk index system considering the characteristics of tourism industry and resource-exhausted cities in China. Taking Zaozhuang City of Shandong Province as an example and using Fuzzy Synthetic Evaluation Model based on analytic hierarchy process, this study translates the risk perception of experts into quantitative results. The study invites20related experts to give their perception of risk indicators and relative importance between every two indicators. The experts consist of academics in Shandong Province, as well as provincial officials in tourism and local government officials of Zaozhuang City. The perception of risk indicators are evaluated into5level. The relative importance are evaluated by9scales and processed through Matlab. Using Fuzzy Synthetic Evaluation Model and the AHP method, the study calculates eigenvalue and eigenvector of the judgement matrix. After Consistency test using eigenvalue and normalization of eigenvector, the study get indicators’weight. After a linear weighted approach, the study gets the total risk value and the rank of risk indicators by value in descending order.The results indicate that the total risk of tourism development during Zaozhuang City’s transformation is between medium level and relatively high level, closer to medium level. Moreover, the study sorts the categories of risk factors by the risk values for Zaozhuang City, which are shown here in descending order: competitive risk, operational risk, industrial risk and relationship risk. On the basis of risk assessment, this study also gives the suggestions on risk prevention.This research is meaningful for both theory and reality. In theory, the definition of risk inthis paper is the uncertainty of loss in the future. It embodies the concept of sustainability. Since sustainability is a concept that is so comprehensive that can be hard to evaluate and focus, the risk study here can contribute to the research on sustainability. In reality, in the pursuit of sustainable development, Chinese powerful government devotes a great many money and human resource to tourism development, which is a significant phenomenon in some resource-exhausted city like the Zaozhuang City. However, the characteristics of tourism industry and resource-exhausted cities might cause many risk factors. China has67resource-exhausted cities based on the quantitative assessment. The research on assessing tourism development risk can help these cities in their decision making about how to choose alternative industry and how to position the tourism industry. Also, as to the resource-exhausted city that already choose tourism as its alternative industry, the sort of the risk factors can give advice to the risk prediction and risk control.In the future research, as for the research content, after risk assessment, the study can investigate and classify different types of city investor such as radical or conservative investor. Then the study can explore the investment decision-making process between risk bearing capacity and required rate of return. For example, the radical city investor will choose to seek for high return and will bear the high risk. They will focus on developing the industry with highest input-output ratio. The conservative city investor will prefer safety and will spread risk by risk investment portfolio. They will develop several alternative industries. As for the research method, the following study can introduce the Bayes Model to supplement this evaluation.