| Popis: |
The strategic position of the Beibu Gulf urban agglomeration has become increasingly prominent in terms of national economic development. In this paper, we propose the life cycle theory of urban agglomerations from the perspective of tourism-economic linkages and study the evolution of tourism-economic linkages and the spatial structure of emerging urban agglomerations in the Beibu Gulf using a modified gravity model and social network analysis. The results show the following: 1) The tourism-economic connection of the Beibu Gulf urban agglomeration was initially limited to neighboring cities dominated by provincial capital cities. Nanning is the main location for developing the tourism economy. With improvements in traffic and the implementation of national policies, tourism-economic ties among urban agglomerations have gradually deepened, with the total number of these connections increasing from 174.84 to 6,542.94 in 2019. The total number of connections in 2019 was 37.42 times that of 2011. The tourism-economic connection structure developed from a loose to a multicore network structure. 2) The density of the tourism-economic connection network in the Beibu Gulf urban agglomeration increased by 6.01 times. The network structure changed from loosely to relatively closely connected, and the degree of tourism economic connections has continuously improved. Moreover, the scope of the core area of the tourism economy continues to expand. The internal network density of the core area increased to 0.833 in 2019, and the links between the core areas continue to strengthen. Although the network density in the fringe area has increased, the internal tourism-economic connection remains weak. 3) The spatial structure of the Beibu Gulf urban agglomeration has evolved from a single center in Nanning to a network-type spatial structure of three centers, seven nodes, and five edges. Nanning, Zhanjiang, and Haikou are important tourism centers and growth poles. The centrality of urban agglomerations has changed from severe polarization and disparity in development status between cities to a more balanced development trend. Among the cities under the jurisdiction of Hainan, except for Haikou, the development of the tourism economy is relatively slow. 4) The Beibu Gulf urban agglomeration entered its growth stage after its embryonic development. However, its development still faces three obstacles: administrative barriers, low competitiveness of tourism products, and unobstructed tourism flow, and it remains far from becoming a mature urban agglomeration. This paper proposes an optimized development mechanism for the Beibu Gulf urban agglomeration of government promotion, transportation linkage, and industrial interaction that is conducive to the high-quality development of the Beibu Gulf urban agglomeration. In conclusion, the main content of this study can compensate for the lack of research on the spatial structure of tourism-economic linkages in emerging urban agglomerations to a certain extent and provide a reference for the development of urban agglomerations in the embryonic and growth stages. |
