Island Ecological Tourism: Constructing Indicators of the Tourist Service System in the Penghu National Scenic Area

Abstract

It is critical to develop a sustainable ecotourism service system for the fragile Penghu National Scenic Area in Taiwan. This study, therefore, adopted the fuzzy Delphi method and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to establish an index framework. The results identified four dimensions with 21 service factors. The findings are as follows. Safety management capability is found to be the main factor in the ecotourism service system. Ecological diversity is essential for the marine environment and the core resource for ecotourism; the transportation capacity and environmental quality need to be improved. Marine environmental resources are indispensable to the development of ecotourism. In addition, the local community must support ecotourism, natural resources should be protected, and the development of ecotourism needs to support the sustainability of local conservation. Therefore, encouraging local residents and stakeholders to attend and promote ecotourism, establishing a safety management system for ecotourism, developing environmental protection regulations for tourists in ecotourism, and improving tourist satisfaction are vital. The government needs to develop guidelines for the protection of marine resources, plan an ecotourism service system, and improve public and transportation infrastructure to make it safe and accessible.

Standardized Reading of Sustainable Tourism Indicators for Ultraperipheral Regions

“…Great store is set by the local community which must be given an explanation regarding the value of the resources supporting said activity. Hence, encouraging the sites and main actors of tourism is a step towards protecting the environment and increasing the satisfaction levels of tourists [11,33,34].…”

Ecotourism as a form of sustainable development

“…Вопросы экологического туризма отражены в научных трудах зарубежных авторов [3][4][5][6][7][8][9] и др. Данное направление рассматривали и отечественные ученые [10][11][12] и др.…”

Evaluation of Urban Ecological Security and Measurement of Urban Ecological Resilience

“…In 1995, the Charter for Sustainable Tourism was adopted at the First World Conference on Sustainable Tourism (Gateway, 2008), which emphasized that the development of tourism must be based on the carrying capacity of the ecological environment. Tourism has always been considered an "environmentally friendly" industry (McCool and Lime, 2001;Li and Zhang, 2022), and tourism nature resource consumption dictates a dichotomy between tourism and the ecological environment (Hsiao et al, 2021). Tourism activities are a major proximate driver of habitat loss and fragmentation, waste discharge, resource overconsumption, and other environmental degradation, often with irreversible impacts on ecosystems (Laurance et al, 2014).…”