Study demonstrates spatial suitability for ecotourism and highlights carrying capacity in a coastal national park, indicating optimal areas for development.
Ecotourism is vital for harmonious human–nature coexistence in national parks, making the quantification of its spatial suitability an urgent scientific priority. This study took the Yellow River Estuary National Park (YRENP) as the study area and constructed a multi-criteria evaluation model by interpreting the relationship between Ecotourism Environmental Carrying Capacity (EECC) and Ecotourism Development Suitability (EDS), addressing the critical gap in the integrated land–sea ecotourism suitability assessment for coastal national parks, using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine indicator weights and ArcGIS for spatial visualization. Multi-source geospatial data, including land use, NDVI, DEM, and socio-economic datasets, were integrated. The results revealed the following: (1) Overall moderate EECC levels with stronger terrestrial capacity contrast with weaker marine capacity—high-carrying zones being limited to nearshore areas; (2) The overall EDS level was favorable, where southern section significantly outperformed northern zones, forming concentrated high-suitability clusters encircling lower-suitability areas; (3) Marine EDS slightly exceeds terrestrial suitability, with optimal coastal zones transitioning landward toward progressively higher suitability. This research provided a replicable methodology for ecotourism suitability assessment in coastal protected areas and supported sustainable spatial planning in land–sea integrated national parks.
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Wang et al. (2025) studied this question.