Acta Geographica Sinica ›› 2012, Vol. 67 ›› Issue (12): 1686-1697.

### The Relationship between Tourism Efficiency Measure and Location Accessibility of Chinese National Scenic Areas

CAO Fangdong, HUANG Zhenfang, WU Jiang, XU Min, ZHOU Wei

1. School of Geographical Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China
• Received:2012-04-17 Revised:2012-10-10 Online:2012-12-20 Published:2012-12-20
• Supported by:

National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.41271149;National Social Science Foundation of China, No.08CJY051;No.12CJY087;A Project Funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions

Abstract: With the synthesized application of data envelopment analysis method and CES production function model, the study estimates the tourism efficiency of Chinese national scenic areas in 1994, 2000 and 2009, and analyzes the internal relationship between tourism efficiency and location accessibility. Combined with the function of GIS spatial analysis, this paper not only simulates the effect of the location accessibility on the overall tourism output of scenic areas as well as on its efficiency change. The results can be obtained as follows: (1) The overall tourism efficiency level of Chinese national scenic areas is lower and the optimal proportion of DEA is smaller, presenting a spatial pattern higher in the eastern region while lower in the central and western regions. In the spatial distribution, the comprehensive efficiency is higher in northeastern, eastern coastal and northern coastal areas, showing a first upward then downward trend. The pure technical efficiency change is similar to that of the comprehensive efficiency. Scale efficiency is increasing generally. However, along with the increase of the number of scenic spots in the area, the increment presents a descending trend. (2) The high value area of tourism efficiency of national scenic areas presents a fan-shaped pattern, that is, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces as the points, Southwest and Northeast China as the axes separately, and the division of population geography as an arc. As for the classification, the comprehensive efficiency of different types including lake, commemoration sites, landscape, leisure and healthcare scenic spots is higher. The pure technical efficiency of mountain and religion types increases gradually. The scale efficiency of forest and landscape types has kept rising. (3) When location accessibility and production elements can meet a certain threshold, location accessibility plays a positive role in promoting the overall tourism output generally, within the local scale the role is still under control. The characteristic of tourism efficiency change is different from that of the overall output variation, forming the spatial pattern of concentration on the negative value area while leaning to the similarities and differences.