Co-evolution of the Tourism Economy and Urban Ecological Resilience in the Mid-Yangtze River Urban Agglomeration

Investigating the symbiotic evolution between tourism economics and urban ecological resilience is crucial for advancing ecological civilization and sustainable regional development within the Yangtze River Midstream Urban Agglomeration. This research employs the entropy weight method and Haken model to quantify development levels of the tourism economy and urban ecological resilience, while evaluating their co-evolutionary progression. Spatiotemporal patterns and driving factors were systematically analyzed using multi-temporal lagged convergence cross-mapping complemented by kernel density estimation. The findings revealed tourism economic development functions as the dominant order parameter in the co-evolutionary mechanism. Urban ecological resilience demonstrates asymmetrical impacts, with its constraining influence on system evolution being weaker than its stimulatory impact. The dynamic interplay between these subsystems exhibits mutual reinforcement and competitive constraints, characterized by negative feedback mechanisms with coordination patterns. Initially, synchronization levels increased, but this trend reversed post-2019. Before 2016, multipolar and bipolar were evident, which transitioned to a unipolar pattern thereafter. The coordination framework has since gone significant improvement, evolving into a dual-core spatial configuration. Within the Yangtze River Midstream Urban Agglomeration, coordination dynamics are predominantly shaped by five key determinants: tourism resource distribution, regulatory interventions, regional economic capacity, sectoral composition, and infrastructure development.