Spatio-Temporal Coordination Analysis of Urban Welfare and Tourism Development in the Yangtze River Delta Region

Realizing the coupled coordination between urban welfare (UW) and tourism development (TD) is an important guarantee to achieve healthy and orderly socioeconomic development and move towards a high-quality life. On the basis of constructing the evaluation system of UW and TD, this study explored the interactive response relationship and spatio-temporal coupled coordination characteristics between UW and TD in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration using the entropy weight TOPSIS method, panel vector autoregression (PVAR) model and coupled coordination degree model. The main findings are as follows: (1) UW and TD in the Yangtze River Delta presented an upward trend from 2001 to 2020, while the development level and growth rate of tourism lagged behind urban welfare, and there was obvious spatial heterogeneity at the provincial level. (2) There was a long-run equilibrium and reciprocal feedback relationship between UW and TD, and the contribution of TD was greater than that of UW to TD. (3) There existed a significantly positive spatial association between UW and TD, and their local spatial association pattern was dominated by High-High and Low-Low clustering. (4) The coupled coordination degree between UW and TD in the Delta region generally showed a spatial pattern decreasing from southeast to northwest, with the regional gap diminishing and the coupled coordination type in most cities gradually evolving from mild and near disordered to bare and primary coordination. This study can form a useful reference for the harmonious improvement of UW and TD in the Yangtze River Delta.