Analysis of the Spatial Relationship between Ecosystem Regulation Services and Rural Tourism

Abstract

In the context of China’s implementation of the rural revitalization strategy and establishment of a mechanism to realize the value of ecological products, rural tourism as an eco-friendly industry promotes regional social and economic development with high-quality natural and ecological conditions in rural areas and is one of the key patterns to realize regional green development. Existing studies in the field focus on the spatial relationship between rural tourism and traditional factors such as economy, population, and transportation and ignore to some extent the relationship between ecosystem services and rural tourism. However, from the perspective of distribution, rural tourism is popular mainly in areas with high ecological quality, so it can be inferred that there is a relationship between ecosystem services and rural tourism. Therefore, this paper targets the key problem—the spatial relationship between ecosystem regulation services and rural tourism, taking rural tourist spots in six districts and counties in the Wuling Mountains in southeastern Chongqing as the subjects, and using the geo-econometric analysis method and geographic detector model to analyze the spatial-driving and development-support roles of ecosystem services on rural tourism. The results show that: (1) the nearest neighbor index of the distribution of rural tourist spots in the regions of study is 0.28, showing a significant clustering trend as a whole; (2) there are obviously high-value areas among the six types of ecosystem regulation services, which are mainly distributed in forest ecosystems; (3) the driving effects of dual factors are more significant, and the combined driving effects of climate regulation and anion supply services are the most significant, with the q value of these driving effects being 0.1962; (4) from the perspective of the supply–demand relationship of industrial development, ecosystem services play an important role in supporting the development of rural tourism. Based on these results, it is proposed in this paper that, in the next step, a comprehensive analysis of the impact of ecosystem regulation services should be conducted during the special planning of rural tourism and the rational layout of industries should be guided on the premise of compliance with space-use control, as well as economical and intensive land use, to support the scientific formulation of regional rural tourism development strategies with new ideas based on basic analysis and better realize the value of ecological products and boost rural revitalization.