Abstract

The study on the sustainable development of tourism based on ecological footprint theory ���¢�����������¢��������taking Loudi, hunan as an example

Author(s): Xintian Liu

Recently the ecological footprint (EF) analysis has been developed into a method of assessing human being’s utilization and the sustainable development of natural resource by measuring area in a quantitative way. The application of this method in tourism can be called tourism ecological footprint (TEF), which quantitatively reflects the impact of tourism on the ecological environment and the sustainable development situation of tourism. Based on ecological footprint theory and taking Loudi, Hunan as an example, the study assesses the sustainable development of tourism in Loudi by analyzing the dynamic variation of TEF and tourism ecological capacity (TEC) from 2005 to 2012. The empirical study shows that the rapid development of tourism industry has brought tremendous pressure to the tourism ecological environment and the tourism ecological contradiction between supply and demand is prominent in Loudi. So the sustainable development strategies of regional tourism are as follows: firstly, adjusting the tourism structure to promote its transforming and upgrading; secondly, changing the traditional concept of tourism planning to make plans from the perspective of ecological security and strengthening the security control to establish the ecological compensation mechanism; thirdly, improving the utilization rate of resource to control the demand of TEF; finally, promoting the land productivity to increase TEC.