Coupling coordination evaluation of economic development, ecological environment, and the tourism industry in ski resorts

In recent years, ski resorts have been growing explosively in China and various issues have emerged regarding their sustainability. To improve the sustainable development of ski tourism, the main objective of this study is to systematically explore the coordinated relationships and mechanisms of the economic development, ecological environment and the tourism industry (EET) in ski resorts. The entropy weighting method and the weighted TOPSIS method were used to construct a coordinated evaluation system of the EET of ski resorts. The comprehensive evaluation indices and coupling coordination degree (CCD) of four typical ski resorts from 2012 to 2020 were calculated, and the factors acting as obstacles were unearthed by applying the obstacle model. At the destination level, the comprehensive evaluation indices of four places are steadily rising, but with varying levels of development and different increases. At the level of chronological evolutionary trends, the dominant trends are the two major shifts from ecological environment lag to economic development lag, and from relative disorder to relative harmony. At the obstacle level, the main obstacles vary somewhat among the resorts in terms of system type, temporal distribution and the magnitude of the obstacles, but ski resource endowment is the main factor. This article introduces the coupling coordination theory, and puts forward policy suggestions to enhance its CCD through the evaluation and comparison of regional coupling status. This approach is used to seek the sustainable and high-quality development of ski resorts in China.