Spatial-temporal Coupling and Coordinating between Urbanization and Tourism Development: A Case Study of Zhoushan Archipelago, China

Abstract

Owing to the limitations of overall capacity and scattered allocations against marine environment, archipelago is always regarded as the typical area of high-level conflicts between human settlement and regional sustainability. The paper tries to apply the coupling and coordination model to clarify the relationship the urbanization initiative and tourism development in China’s Zhoushan archipelago region. Using data sets from 2006 to 2016, the researches show that: (1) urbanization level of Zhoushan improved steadily but with some fluctuations; (2) the spatial disparities were obvious among islands from spatial centers to peripheries; (3) the coupling degree between urbanization and tourism development improved; (4) the tourism positively affected the coupling and coordinating development of the urbanization and tourism development while the urbanization negatively affected the coupling coefficient, on the contrary, it positively affected the coordinating coefficient at present.