A System Dynamics Approach for Analyzing Sustainable Tourism Industry in China

Today with the fast economy development in China, tourism has became a very important industry for many areas. However, how to properly manage the development of tourism industry so that it can be sustainable is still a very challenging task faced by the local governments. In the past, some touristic areas, after a short flouring period, are abandoned by tourists for various reasons. In this paper, we presented a system dynamics model to study the sustainability for the development of tourism industry. Our model incorporates four different factors (tourists, tourism facility, environment impact, government income) and analyzes their impacts on the tourism industry. Our model clearly considers the trade-off between different factors and accurately predicts the impact among different interactions. Compared with the traditional black-box econometric models, our system dynamics model shows clearer and more direct relationship between policy and sustainable development of tourism industry. Our system analysis method is an important and promising tool for the government policy maker to ensure the sustainability when they are making development plans for the local tourism industry.