Spatial Tourism Spillovers and Urban Livability: Coupling Coordination Effects in Recreation Mobility in China

Understanding the complex spatial interaction between urban livability and tourism is critical for promoting sustainable development of tourist destinations taking into account the spatial spillover effects of visitors. The present chapter assumes that the local recreation system—comprising of effective demands, internal mobility, and spatial costs of recreation mobility—plays a critical role in the above interaction between tourism development and urban livability. This research question leads to the need for a coupling coordination analysis in the context of spatial tourism dependence effects. In our study, a spatial tourism analysis framework and related hypotheses are put forward and tested, using data from 253 Chinese prefecture-level cities based on the Geographical Detector Method. The statistical results show a low degree of correspondence between general tourism spillovers and urban livability. More specifically, internal mobility appears to exert a more significant influence on the coupling coordination degree, while the effects of effective visitors’ demand and spatial interaction costs related to urban tourism spillovers are relatively weaker. Finally, there is a reciprocal superposition effect when it comes to the geographical interaction effect of the combination of these influencing factors.