Abstract:

With the extension of tourism activities,fast development in tourism industries brings considerable benefits to regional economic,and it meanwhile brings some negative effects to local physical and social environments. How to evaluate regional sustainable development of tourism is one of significant themes for tourism study. In the past,many concepts and methods have been used to evaluate the environmental consequences of tourism,including tourism environmental bearing capacity(TEBC),environmental impact assessments(EIA),and the limits of acceptable change system(LAC). However,these methods and techniques have many limitations. Ecological footpring analysis is a new method of ecological economics that quantitatively measures ecological consumption by mankind and the extent of sustainable development. Touristic ecological footprint is the applicaton of its theory in tourism research. Touristic ecological footprint(TEF)not only overcomes this weakness,but provides a measure of demands upon the biological productivity of tourism activity. The ecological footprint is the area of productive land and water which support both their consumption and disposal of waste. TEF introduces a concept of area to explain that tourists resource consumption through all tourism activity,and this measure is universal,and can be used for direct comparison. Shanghai tourism objective is to build a worldfamous tourist city during the National Twelfth FiveYear Plan period. Environment and natural resources are the cornerstone of tourism,and also subject to the negative impact of tourism. In this paper,applied the ecological footprint theory and methods,combined with tourist ecological consumption and structure characteristics,with the aid of spatial information technology,the touristism ecological footprint were calculated in Shanghai in 2009. It divided the model of TEF into six submodels of ecological footprint from the frame character of tourism consumption. The results show that the ecological footprint and per capital ecological were 6 633 483.428 hm2 and 466547×10-4 hm2 respectively in 2009. The local ecological carrying capacity and per capita tourism ecological carrying capacity were 1 900 029.08 hm2 and 146908 7×10-4 hm2. And the touristism ecological deficit in 2009 was 319692×10-4 hm2. The largest proportions of ecological footprint were tourism transportation and tourist shopping,accounting for 7179% and 2376% respectively. After that,they were tourist accommodation and tourist catering,accounting for 344% and 014% respectively. The smallest proportions were tourist sightseeing and tourist entertainment. Those showed tourism was a kind of comprehensive life style,which was high demand for natural resources and high consumption. More,the energy consumption of vehicle was the key factor which caused the touristic transportation footprint. Especially through the traffic industry,the ecological footprint of interregional transfer would lead to tourism ecological responsibility interregional transfer and ecological effect of interregional diffusion. This means that the tourism development has the influence of global ecological features and produce important influence to regional and even global sustainable development. Currently tourism is developing in an unsustainable manner,so appropriate initiatives are in need to strike a balance between tourism development and resource conservation. Finally,adjustment of tourism industry internal structure,the development of transportation with environmental protection and energy saving,promotion the lowcarbon tourism development,development of distinctive tourism commodity,advocating tourists with low energy consumption and low pollution based on green travel were put forward to improve tourism shopping consumption,ensure ecological sustainable utilization of resources and maintain rapid economic development of tourism