演化经济地理学视角下旅游目的地研究述评及启示

由于旅游目的地系统的多元和综合属性,其研究内容往往呈现跨学科的属性,涵盖地理学、经济学、管理学、社会学等多个领域。20世纪90年代以来,以进化论和复杂系统论为理论基础,强调历史过程和空间异质性的演化经济地理学,因其超越原有的单线逻辑的叙事而受到旅游研究者的关注。作为旅游目的地研究的新范式和新理论,演化经济地理学被应用于旅游目的地的演化路径和演化动力机制,并为其提供了“结构—过程”分析视角。而另一方面,中国旅游目的地的发展及演变,和西方发达国家的经验有着较大区别,只有在充分立足于中国旅游目的地的实际状况和基本国情的基础上,才能够更好地构建“中国特色”的旅游目的地理论体系,探索更为多元化的旅游研究方法。加强与政治经济学和制度经济学研究的结合能够为中国的旅游实践提供较为宏观尺度的政策分析视角,进而有助于旅游公共服务体系的转型升级;加强中微观层面的多尺度耦合机制和多元主体行为研究,将有助于探索不同利益相关者参与下中国旅游目的地的可持续发展路径。

Review of tourist destination research in the perspective of evolutionary economic geography

Because of the diversity and complexity of tourist destination, its research is often cross-disciplinary, covering geography, economics, management, sociology, and so on. Tourism area life cycle, tourism industry cluster, and tourist destination management and governance have been concerned by economic geographers. Evolutionary economic geography (EEG) stresses historical processes and spatial heterogeneity and relies on three main conceptual foundations: path dependence, complexity theory, and generalized Darwinism. In recent years, tourism scholars have found EEG a useful paradigm with studies focusing on tourism area development, tourist destination management or governance, local tourism industry, and tourism stakeholders in creating new paths. These studies have shown the usefulness of a path dependence (and path creation), complexity theory, and generalized Darwinism approach in tourism research. Furthermore, several studies offer comprehensive overviews relating EEG to both cultural political economy and behavioral research approaches in tourism studies that include structural and process perspectives. China's tourist destination development and change are different from those of the West. With its socialist market economy model, public ownership co-exists with the private sector. The Chinese government still engages in the macro-management of the national economy, operating and controlling strategic industries and regulating certain prices. It also applies a top-down governance model in tourist destination management. In this article, we discussed the Chinese characteristics in tourist destination system, and suggested two directions in future tourism studies in China: linking the perspective of EEG with political economy and institutional economy can provide macro policy analysis for China's tourism studies, and thus contribute to the transformation and upgrading of tourism public service system; taking the perspective of multi-scale coupling at the meso- and micro-scales and multiple stakeholder analysis can help explore diverse stakeholder participation, and thus contribute to the sustainable development of tourism destination in China. With this background, China provides a fascinating environment to explore diversified tourism research methods; and the fact that tourism is a relatively new development area provides the potential to explore how the bureaucratic mechanisms are responding to the need for policy changes.