Tourism ecological resilience is an important indicator of the sustainable development capacity of the tourism ecosystem, and reveals the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics and driving factors, which is a reference basis for promoting the sustainable development of tourism.

Based on adaptive capacity, resilience, and transformative potential, an evaluation index system for tourism ecological resilience was constructed. Using the entropy weight-TOPSIS method, exploratory spatial data analysis, standard deviation ellipses, and the geographic detector model, the spatiotemporal evolution and driving factors of tourism ecological resilience in the Yangtze River Economic Belt from 2014 to 2023 were analyzed.

1) From 2014 to 2019, tourism ecological resilience showed a stable upward trend, while it exhibited a “W”-shaped pattern from 2019 to 2023, and the overall was low. There are significant spatial differences, with the distribution characterized by downstream regions>midstream regions>upstream regions. 2) The global autocorrelation of tourism ecological resilience is not significant, but local autocorrelation shows four types of clustering: high-high, high-low, low-high, and low-low. The number of districts with significant local autocorrelation has increased from 17 to 24. 3) The spatial discrete degree of tourism ecological resilience shows a pattern of contraction followed by expansion, with a clear directional trend. The azimuth angle expands each year, while the center of gravity remains largely stable. 4) Tourism resources, economic development, government regulation, and ecosystem resilience are the main factors influencing the spatiotemporal evolution of tourism ecological resilience in the Yangtze River economic belt.

The tourism ecological resilience is weak overall, and the spatial difference is obvious in the Yangtze River economic belt. Therefore, promoting the upgrading of the tourism industry, developing new tourism forms such as smart tourism and eco-tourism, increasing ecological protection and restoration, and implementing cross-regional tourism resource integration and optimal allocation are the key measures to enhance tourism ecological resilience.

To reveal the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of eco-efficiency in Dongting lake area, and to explore its influencing factors, so as to provide a reference basis for the coordinated development of economic development and ecological environment.

Using resource consumption as an input indicator and economic development and environmental pollution as desired and non-desired outputs, the super-efficiency SBM model, exploratory spatial data analysis, standard deviation ellipse and geoprobe were used to analyze the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics and influencing factors of the eco-efficiency of the 17 county units in Dongting lake region from 2014 to 2023.

1) The temporal variation of eco-efficiency showed a rising trend year by year during the study period, in which the growth rate was faster in 2014-2019, slower in 2020-2022 due to the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic, and recovered in 2023, showing a spatial distribution characterized by a higher level in the northwest and a lower level in the southeast; 2) The spatial correlation feature of eco-efficiency showed significant positive global spatial autocorrelation as a whole, with the strongest clustering in 2016, and four types of clustering existed in the local autocorrelation, namely, low-low, low-high, high-low and high-high. The spatial dispersion of eco-efficiency has basically stabilized in terms of spatio-temporal migration characteristics, with the center of gravity located in the central region of Dongting lake, and gradually moving to the positive west direction; 3) The level of economic development, industrial structure proportion, scientific and technological development, environmental governance capacity and urbanization level are important influence factors on the spatiotemporal evolution of eco-efficiency.

The overall eco-efficiency of the Dongting lake area is at a low level, and there are large regional differences. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen scientific and technological innovation, promote the application and promotion of environmental protection technology, accelerate the upgrading and transformation of industrial structure and improve the green productivity of enterprises, strengthen cross-regional cooperation, promote the coordination of economic growth and ecological protection, improve the efficiency of resource utilization, and promote synergistic regional development.