Progress of emergy research on tourism systems

Abstract

Emergy analysis based on emergy evaluation and transformation is an appropriate methodology for analyzing and evaluating material, energy, and monetary relationships and how the various levels interact with each other in any ecological or economic system. The tourism ecological system, centering on tourist activities, is a composite ecological system made up from nature, society, economy and tourism activities. It is a special type of man-land area relationship and emergy research on tourism can provide scientific advice for the sustainable development of scenic spots. Based on relevant literature reviews, system comparison and analysis of similar research, the author arrived at the conclusions that the emergy in the tourism system has major distinctive elements related to advancing theories, element selection, establishing indices and integrating methods. The paper proposes future directions for expanding emergy research on tourism systems from theoretical, methodological and content aspects.Generally speaking, there are very few domestic emergy analyses that take the domestic tourism industry system as the object of research and study from a micro scale. In comparison with foreign studies, when viewed from the reasonable utilization, index selection, data acquisition, system integrity, and practice guidance aspects, amongst many others, the research is still weak. From the angle of geographical distribution, different countries have different resource backgrounds, and the research results are dependent on the method used. Therefore, emergy research is an urgent requirement for most countries. However, when comparing the results of different countries, we discover that only when calculation methods are unified can the reliability of the results be improved. Therefore, theoretically building the emergy analysis system of the tourism ecosystem is essential. Determination of the boundary of the tourism ecosystem is the basis of emergy analysis. In reality, ecosystem fragmentation caused by administrative jurisdiction makes the definition of the value object too difficult. Thus, this affects data collection, selection of input and output indicators and the qualitative expression of calculation results. In order to solve this problem, we can increase the effort spent in the case study. The study of small scales should be encouraged for ease of data acquisition and increased reliability. In the future, it is important to take the Huangshan or Jiuzhaigou scenic spots as examples, using the method of emergy analysis and to discuss them from the angle of the tourism eco-economic system, conducting a systemic analysis on the emergy flow of a scenic spot. Some novel indexes could be proposed, e.g., emergy exchange ratio of tourism, environmental loading ratio of tourism, emergy sustainability index of tourism, emergy sustainable development index of tourism, emergy tourism ecosystem health index, etc.In addition, we need to provide further discussion of the method from three different aspects: the first is focusing on a multidisciplinary approach combining research. The second is paying attention to the use of a new benchmark. The last is paying attention to the analysis of the process and putting forward a new index evaluation system suitable for the system's attributes, then, probing the effect and mechanism of the main ecological economic flow with a complete method. Finally, we should strengthen the diachronic analysis and horizontal comparative study of the tourism ecosystem.