A Study on the Tourism Spatial Structure over the West Coast of the Taiwan Strait Economic Zone
海峡西岸经济区旅游景区(点)空间结构分析

With great support from the Chinese government, the tourism industry across the west coast of the Taiwan Strait economic zone is faced with great opportunities of accelerating development. Based on an investigation of 105 National AAAA tourist attractions and using GIS and some quantitative analysis methods, such as Geographic Concentration Index (GCI), Distribution Ellipse (DE), and Nearest Neighbor Index (NNI), the spatial structure of 105 tourist attractions was investigated, with their characteristics and distribution for different strategies being discussed. It was found that Xiamen City is highly rich in quality tourism resources. Nanping is also an important tourism city known for the Wuyi Mountain. Effectively developing and improving the construction of related facilities and services across the Wuyi Mountain area will determine the extent of the future development level of tourism in Nanping. In general, attractions can be divided into four types: natural attractions, e.g., natural scenic spots, forest parks, nature reserves, and rural village; red attractions, which are mainly about the theme of the Anti-Japanese War; Hakka attractions, which are mainly about Hakka culture; and other cultural attractions, which contains historical sites, ancient gardens, museums and sports venues except the red attractions and Hakka attractions. Natural attractions are the main type. The red attractions and Hakka attractions are the characteristic types of attractions across the study area. Their distributions seem to be consistent with natural landscape features, historical and cultural origins. The values of GCI show that general attractions, natural attractions, red attractions and Hakka attractions are primarily concentrated on certain areas on the city scale. The values of NNI show that general attractions and Hakka attractions exhibit an aggregated distribution. Natural attractions and red attractions were evenly distributed. Natural landscape features, historical and cultural origins, the level of economic development of a city, and the role of the local government are the major factors affecting the spatial structure of tourist attractions across the study area. At last, some recommendations are given for optimization of the spatial structure of tourist attractions, involving coordinating the development of the tourism industry for each city, enhancing basic infrastructure of transportation especially the connections between Nanping, Longyan, Sanming, Lishui and the cities around them, highlighting the features of tourist attractions, especially the natural attractions, red attractions, and Hakka attractions, and attracting more individuals and capital to the development of tourism construction.