Abstract:

The primary goal of this study is to build a resilience evaluation system with stability landscape based on the theory of basin model which reflects the characteristics of resilience. The study proposes the socio-ecological system resilience indicators of tourist destination, including the fragility, and response capacity in social, economic and ecological subsystems. In particular, by adopting the set pair analysis, the paper empirically measures the socio-ecological system resilience, identifies the main factors influencing resilience, and illustrates the mechanism that influences the tourism socio-ecological system. In addition, the paper introduces curve distribution patterns of Qiandao Lake. The results are as follows: (1) During the period 1987-2012, the socio-ecological system fragility index in the Qiandao Lake slowly increased from 0.4576 to 0.5622, the index of adaptive capacity rose rapidly from 0.0282 to 0.9725, and the resilience index rose steadily from 0.1276 to 0.8669. The resilience should be the result of the interaction between fragility and response capability. (2) The total fragility is mostly affected by the ecological subsystem, whereas the total response capacity, by the economic subsystem. The social and economic subsystems, however, directly affect the total resilience. As a matter of fact, the total response capacity plays a decisive role in resilience, in which response capacity of social and economic subsystems are more significant, although the system itself also has certain resistance and resilience. (3) In each subsystem, the resilience factors are divided into two categories respectively with regard to the fragility and response capacity. The fragility consists of the base elements of the subsystems and the relevant variables brought about by tourism development. The response capacity mainly includes the input and storage factors in every subsystem. (4) In the socio-ecological system of tourist destination, the relationship between the impact factors and the resilience falls into roughly six curve types. On the one hand, there are two types of linear relationships between the resilience and ecological background conditions, social stability, industrial livelihood and ecological control measures. The one is in the trend of progressive increase and the other, of progressive decrease. On the other hand, U-shaped curves or inverted U-shaped curves, are mainly related to fragility indexes and response capacity indexes brought by tourism development. In terms of impact direction, rates and ways, the influence curve of resilience factors can be divided into four types, namely U-shaped increasing curve, U-shaped decreasing curve, inverted U-shaped curve which increases fast at first and then decreases slowly, and inverted U-shaped curve which increases slowly at first and then decreases fast. In conclusion, nonlinear effects still dominate. There are differences and uncertainty in the direction and rate of the factors. The results, in fact, further confirm the nonlinear thought of resilience and the applicability of the set pair analysis method.

Key words: tourism socio-ecological system, resilience, impact factors, Qiandao Lake