Ecotourism resilience reflects the ability of tourism ecosystem to cope with internal and external shocks, and reveals the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics and driving factors of this ability, which is an important reference value for promoting the sustainable development of ecotourism.

Based on the theoretical connotation of ecotourism resilience, the evaluation index system was constructed from four dimensions of economic resilience, social resilience, cultural resilience and ecological resilience. The entropy weight TOPSIS method and geo-detector were used to analyze the spatio-temporal evolution characteristics of the ecotourism resilience and the influencing factors of the Dongting lake area from 2002 to 2022.

1) During the past 20 years, the ecotourism resilience has been weak, and the overall trend of “W” shape fluctuation evolution showed that ecotourism is subject to strong internal and external shocks, and the development is unstable; in the four dimensional indexes, ecological resilience > cultural resilience > economic resilience > social resilience; 2) The spatial difference in the ecotourism resilience is remarkable, showing the trend of high in the east and low in the west, high in the south and low in the north, forming a belt-like distribution pattern centered on Yueyang City, Yiyang City and Changde City and radiating outward; 3) Factors such as the level of the tourism economy, the strength of government regulation, the state of the ecological environment, and the endowment of tourism resources are the main driving forces influencing the spatio-temporal evolution of the ecotourism resilience.

The ecotourism resilience is weak, and the difference between counties is obvious in the Dongting lake region. Therefore, strengthening government regulation, activating tourism economic potential, optimizing ecotourism environment, and advancing integrated development of culture and tourism are the keys to improving the resilience of ecotourism.