Evaluation and spatial effects of tourism ecological security in the Yangtze River Delta.

• Evaluated the quality but not the quantity of tourism ecological security. • A new evaluation framework of tourism ecological security was created. • Spatial autocorrelation analysis was applied to examine the tourism ecological security pattern. • There is the significant spatial spillover effect on tourism ecological security in the YRD. Tourism ecological security (TES) is an essential component and basic guarantee of the tourism regional system, and it is of great significance for scientific measurement of the operational status of a regional tourism ecological security system. The study focuses on the "quality" of tourism ecological security that has been neglected in the previous literature. From the perspective of system efficiency, taking the Yangtze River Delta as the case, we build the index system of regional tourism ecological security measurement based on the "DPSIR" model, and identify the quality of the tourism ecological security system using the data envelopment analysis method. On this basis, the study uses spatial autocorrelation to visualize the spatiotemporal patterns of evolution and regional differences, and uses spatial econometric model to study the spatial effects of regional tourism ecological security. The study shows that: the tourism ecological security follows an overall rising trend of "W" fluctuation with regional differences in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD). Tourism ecological security of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai is in good condition, that of Anhui Province is poor, and Hangzhou, Zhoushan, Huangshan, Shanghai, Nanjing and other cities perform well. The overall spatial autocorrelation of tourism ecological security is significant and shows a trend of fluctuation intensification. The local correlation indicates that the tourism ecological security space is highly dependent and has a spatial differentiation pattern of "south to north" in Yangtze River Delta. The direct effects of park greenspace per capita, proportion of total tourism revenue in GDP, number of employees in the tertiary industry, and education expenditure on the regional tourism ecological security are significant. And the indirect spatial spillover effect of park greenspace per capita, the proportion of total tourism revenue in GDP, and education expenditure is obvious. Finally, from the perspective of efficiency, quality can effectively clarify the operational process and mutual relationships of regional tourism ecological security systems, and provide a scientific basis and reference for formulating targeted tourism development policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]