Keywords

1 Introduction

In 2008, the Hainan provincial government released “construction action plan for Hainan international tourism island” for the first time, in which it was proposed to build Hainan Island into the world class, international tropical island vacation, and leisure travel destination with the characteristics of the internationalization of tourism facilities, tourism services, tourism products, and eco-tourism environment, distinctive features, security, and foreign tourists yearning, after 20 years of efforts [1]. According to the construction action plan of Hainan International Tourism Island, Hainan will be built into “the Island of tourism and opening up, the Island of enjoy and Sun, the Island of leisure and holiday, the Island of ecological harmony, the Island of civilized service.” It is the core of the construction of the international tourist city to improve the construction of Hainan eco-tourism increasingly during the process of building Hainan International Tourism Island, in addition to the software and hardware construction.

Since the 1980s, eco-tourism has been considered a critical endeavor by environmentalists, so that future generations may experience destinations relatively untouched by human intervention [2]. What is eco-tourism? It is difficult to give an authorized definition, but eco-tourism is defined as “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people” [3]. Eco-tourism in Wikipedia free encyclopedia is defined as a form of tourism involving visiting fragile, pristine, and relatively undisturbed natural areas, intended as a low impact and often small-scale alternative to standard commercial (mass) tourism. No matter which definition, the purpose of ecotourism may be to educate the traveler, to provide funds for ecological conservation, to directly benefit the economic development and political empowerment of local communities, or to foster respect for different cultures and for human right [2]. The so-called international eco-tourism city refers to a tourist city to open natural and cultural landscapes for tourists from around the world and the one with sustainable development under the standards of no ecological environmental pollution and destruction through limiting the number of visitors [4]. Including Sansha city newly established, Hainan Province has a total of 19 cities and counties. Is it not very clear by now which cities have conditions and competitiveness of eco-tourism. The purpose of this study was to systematically evaluate and select top ten eco-tourism cities from Hainan Island, by selecting the reasonable evaluation method and constructing the evaluation index systems, in order to provide the reference for tourists to make the decision on the destination selection and also provide a useful practice for the construction of the eco-tourism city.

2 The Advantages of Hainan Island Eco-Tourism Resources

Hainan Island tourism resources are very rich, distinctive, high quality, and deeply welcomed by domestic and foreign tourists. Hainan has about 335 of natural tourism resources, in which resource numbers of physiographic landscape, biological landscapes, water scenery, and the planetarium climates accounted for 50.0, 22.1, 21.0 and 6.9 %, respectively. The data indicated that the natural tourism resources in Hainan are mainly the categories of landscape class, biological landscape, and water scenery [5]. The main advantages of eco-tourism in Hainan Island were as following:

  1. 1.

    The advantage in natural resources. It includes the advantages of tropical coastal scenery resource, tropical rainforest resources, tropical climate resources, tropical agricultural cash crop resources and hot spring resources, etc, such as: Yalong Bay, Shimei Bay, and Perfume Bay. Numerous national and provincial nature reserves and ecological demonstration zones—Jianfengling, Wuzhishan, Diaoluoshan tropical rainforests, and mangrove wetland system, etc.

  2. 2.

    The advantage in natural environments. Such as: fresh air and high density of negative oxygen ions due to the island surrounded by the sea and covered by dense vegetations, sunny weather, light industrial pollution, etc. Moreover, the average life expectancy in Hainan Province ranks first in China. Therefore, many Chinese and foreigners take Hainan Island as “rare unspoilt virgin land in the world today.”

  3. 3.

    The advantage in geographic location. Hainan is located in the circular belt of western Pacific, only way that must be passed in the traffic between the Pacific and Indian Ocean, the crossroads between China, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asian countries, and ideally transit and rest place for the past travelers.

  4. 4.

    The advantage in policy. Hainan is the China’s largest special economic zone and enjoys country’s unique special policies, such as “landing visa,” “offsite visa,” duty-free shops, and others.

  5. 5.

    The advantage in ethnic customs and overseas Chinese. Hainan is a multiethnic province, in which Hainan Li and Miao ethnic customs, folk dance, ethnic costumes were very popular to tourists. Hainan overseas Chinese have more than 200 million, which is a valuable asset for Hainan to expand tourist markets [6].

3 Selection of Evaluation Methods

The selection of evaluation methods is the core of the evaluation, because the evaluation method is related to the credibility of the evaluation results. The evaluation results on the same item might be totally different if different evaluation methods were adopted, due to differences of the theoretical basis of the evaluation method, the application scope, and inherent characteristics; therefore, the selection of evaluation methods must consider the evaluated item and characteristics of evaluation methods at the same time. There are many evaluation methods to be used by now, but the analysis of hierarchy process (AHP), clustering, principal component analysis, and entropy weight methods were commonly used to evaluate the eco-tourism, such as AHP used to evaluate ecological tourism resource [7]. Other evaluation methods were also used in practice, such as: the method of principal component analysis used in tourism attraction grade assessment [8] and clustering method used to evaluate the tourism competitiveness factor of cities [9]. AHP is a subjective evaluation method, in which the evaluation weights need to be designed according to human’s ideas. The entropy and principal component analysis methods are the objective evaluation method, in which the weighting was calculated objectively according to the differences of the evaluation index data. Because the empowerment method is completely dependent on the differences of evaluation index data, the result of the evaluation often exists some differences with the actual situation, so those methods can only be suited for secondary evaluation means [10]. The cluster analysis is also an assist evaluation method. It will achieve ideal effects when only combined with other evaluation methods. This paper attempts to use the methods of combining quantitative and qualitative evaluations, single-objective, multi-objective and clustering evaluation to evaluate the eco-tourism cities in Hainan Island.

4 The Construction of Evaluation Index Systems

4.1 The Principles of Constructing Index Systems for the Eco-Tourism City Evaluation

  1. 1.

    Rich in eco-tourism resources, high-impact index, and high quality. Such as the categories, quantities, scale, well-known and reputation, esthetic and recreational values of tourism resources.

  2. 2.

    A large number of tourists accepted and events held frequently.

  3. 3.

    Beautiful ecological environment to accord with eco-tourism requirements. Such as air and water quality, sanitation condition, vegetation covering rate, biodiversity index, tourism capacity, etc.

  4. 4.

    Great development potential in eco-tourism resources. Such as the development of new eco-tourism items, improvement on the quality of tourism items, and infrastructure investments.

  5. 5.

    Distinct characteristics in tourism resources, beautiful human environments, sound finance, etc.

4.2 The Construction of Evaluation Index System for Eco-Tourism Cities

According to the principles of constructing evaluation index system for eco-tourism cities, ten indicators were initially selected as the evaluation index system for eco-tourism cities, such as (1) number of the city’s scenic spots, (2) number of A and over A level scenic spots, (3) number of golf course, (4) major events, (5) proposed projects on 12th Five-Year Plan, (6) GDP, (7) tourists accepted in hotels, (8) tourists accepted in restaurants, (9) landing typhoons, and (10) times of mud-rock flow and landslides.

4.3 Features of Evaluation Index System for Eco-Tourism Cities

The evaluation index system was simple, but covering the most important aspects possessed by an eco-tourism city. Among them, the number of tourists accepted in hotels and restaurants is an indicator of reflecting the number of visitors. The greater the number of tourists accepted in hotels and restaurants, the more abundant in tourism resources and the higher the quality of tourism resources. GDP is an indicator of the overall urban economic level. With the improvement of the GDP, eco-tourism facilities, ecological environmental conditions, quality of service, and potential development on tourism resources, etc. will be improved and enhanced. The quantities of scenic spots, A and over A level scenic spots, golf courses, and large-scale events and activities can fully reflect the scale, quality, and influence of tourism resources in a city. Landing typhoons, mud-rock flow, and landslides are the natural disaster indicators, which will have bad effects on the eco-tourism cities.

5 The Application of the Evaluation Method

Only 18 cities and counties in Hainan Island were evaluated in this chapter, in which newly established Sansha city was not included, because the tourism projects in Sansha city has not yet officially launched, and data used as the evaluation have not happened. Top ten will be selected from 18 cities and counties in Hainan Province by above-selected evaluation methods. The evaluation data were mainly collected from the local chronicles and the Hainan Provincial tourism resources Web sites. Original data for 18 cities and counties in Hainan Island were listed in Table 1.

Table 1 Original data used as the evaluation of eco-tourism cities
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5.1 The Single-objective Evaluation

According to the data in Table 1, evaluation results over various evaluation factors were listed in Table 2. The results showed that six counties and counties of Sanya, Wanning, Haikou, Qionghai, Danzhou, and Wenchang were kept in the top ten among 18 cities and counties in the ranking of all single-objective evaluations; therefore, these six cities and counties were evaluated as the candidates of top ten eco-tourism cities in Hainan Province. Three evaluation indicators of tourists accepted in hotels, tourists accepted in restaurants, and GDP for Baoting were outside the top ten. Two evaluation indicators of events and activities and GDP for Lingshui were outside the top ten. The indicator of the quantities of scenic spots for Chengmai was outside the top ten. The indicator of GDP for Dingan was outside of top ten.

Table 2 Single-objective ranking
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Only indicator of the quantities of scenic spots for Wuzhishan was in the top ten. Other cities and counties were all ranked in outside of top ten.

5.2 Multi-Objective Ranking

Based on the same weight coefficient for each evaluation index, sequence numbers of six evaluation indexes in Table 2 for each city or county was added to get a numeric value, which was considered as the multi-objective evaluation score. Based on those scores, 18 cities and counties were ranked. Multi-objective ranking results and scores obtained were listed in Table 3. According to the multi-objective ranking scores, the sequence of top ten cities or counties were as follows from top one to top ten: Sanya, Haikou, Wanning, Qionghai, Danzhou, Wenchang, Lingshui Chengmai, Dingan, and Baoting. Among them, the top six cities and counties of Sanya, Haikou, Wanning, Qionghai, Danzhou, and Wenchang were the same results with single-objective evaluation results.

Table 3 Multi-objective ranking
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5.3 Selecting Eco-Tourism Cities According to the Layout of the Construction and Development Plan for Hainan International Tourism Island (2010–2020)

According to the plan, the land use in Hainan Province was divided into six functional areas [11]: (1) integrated industrial development area for the northern cities, including Haikou, Wenchang, Lingao, and Chengmai (2) integrated tourism development area for the eastern cities, including Wenchang, Qionghai, and Wanning (3) integrated tourism development area for the southern cities, including Sanya, Lingshui, and Ledong (4) industrial town development area for the western cities, including Danzhou, Changjiang, Dongfang, and Ledong (5) terraced agricultural comprehensive development areas around the Island, including terraced area around the Island of Haikou, Wenchang, Qionghai, Wanning, Dingan, Tunchang, Chengmai, Lingao, Danzhou, Baisha, Changjiang, Dongfang, and Ledong, etc. cities (counties) (6) central ecological protection area, including the part areas of Wuzhishan, Qiongzhong, Baoting, Danzhou, Baisha, Changjiang, Dongfang, Ledong, Sanya, and Lingshui. According to the plan, the eastern and southern cities and counties, such as Wenchang, Qionghai, Wanning, Sanya, Lingshui, and Ledong, were classified into the tourism development areas; therefore, those six cities and counties should be among the top ten eco-tourism cities. With the exceptions of Ledong, other five cities were already selected as the top ten, based on the multi-objective evaluation results.

5.4 Cluster Analysis

Sample clustering is clustered one by one, based on the distance between the samples. The samples with close relationship were clustered into a small-class unit first, then those with distant relationship were clustered into a large class unit until all the samples were clustered. Based on the data in Table 1, 18 cities and counties were clustered through the sample clustering analysis method, with Euclidean squared distance coefficient, the average linkage (between groups) clustering method. Clustering results were shown in the dendrogram of Fig. 1. According to Fig 1, the 18 cities and counties were clustered into three categories: (1) Haikou, (2) Sanya, Danzhou, (3) the others. Haikou, Sanya, and Danzhou in category (1) and (2) were selected as the candidates of top ten eco-tourism cities by the multi-objective evaluation method.

Fig. 1
figure 1

The dendrogram of 18 cities and counties

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After excluding Haikou, Sanya, and Danzhou, re-clustering results were shown in Fig. 2. Based on the dendrogram in Fig. 2, 15 cities and counties were clustered into four categories: (1) Wanning, Chengmai, Dongfang, (2) Qionghai, Wenchang, (3) Baisha, Baoting, Wuzhishan, Qiongzhong, Tunchang, (4) Lingshui, Changjiang, Ledong, Dingan, Lingao. One to two cities in each clustering category were the top ten candidates obtained with the multi-objective evaluation method. They were Wanning and Chengmai in category (1), Qionghai and Wenchang in category (2), Baoting in category (3), and Lingshui and Dingan in category (4). The clustering results showed that top ten candidates were evenly distributed in each category. It indicated that the distribution of eco-tourism cities was reasonable and representative.

Fig. 2
figure 2

The dendrogram of 15 cities and counties

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5.5 Qualitative Analysis Between Ledong and Dingan, Wuzhishan and Chengmai

Dingan and Chengmai were top ten candidates in multi-objective ranking; however, Ledong and Wuzhishan were not in the top ten. Dingan and Ledong were not close to each other in the multi-objective ranking, but the cluster analysis showed that they belong to the same category, so they were highly similar in the evaluation index. The tourism resources in Dingan were rich than those in Ledong, but features were not prominent. Tropical montane rainforest ecosystem in Ledong is typical in the world. In addition, the southern part of Ledong was classified into the integrated tourism development area in the construction development plan for Hainan International Tourism Island; therefore, Ledong will have a huge potential for development in the future. Furthermore, Ledong was an important part of the central ecological protection region in the construction development plan and Li Autonomous County. According to the above points of view, Ledong was selected into one of top ten eco-tourism city to replace Dingan.

Wuzhishan and Chengmai were not close either in the multi-objective evaluation ranking, but compared with Wuzhishan, tourism resources in Chengmai were not rich and Chengmai belongs to the non-tourist development areas in the plan. In contrast, Wuzhishan was classified into the central ecological protection areas, and the tropical rainforest ecosystem in Wuzhishan was very famous in China. Therefore, Wuzhishan was selected into the one of top ten eco-tourism cities to replace Chengmai.

6 Results and Discussion

Based on the combination of quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods, single-objective, multi-objective, and clustering evaluation methods, the final evaluation results of top ten eco-tourism cities in Hainan were Haikou, Sanya, Wanning, Danzhou, Qionghai, Lingshui (Li Autonomous County), Wenchang, Baoting (Li and Miao Autonomous County), Wuzhishan, and Ledong (Li Autonomous County). The distribution pattern of the ten eco-tourism cities was as following: one in the southwest, one in the western, two in the southern, two in the central, two in the eastern, and two in the northern (Fig. 3). The main characteristics for top ten eco-tourism cities were shown in Table 4.

Fig. 3
figure 3

The distribution map of top ten eco-tourism cities and counties in Hainan Island

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Table 4 Major feature of top ten eco-tourism cities and counties
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This chapter was a preliminary evaluation to eco-tourism cities in Hainan, because the evaluation index system was relatively simple and needs to be further improved. The results indicated that only if the multi-objective evaluation method was taken as the foundation method, cluster analysis as an assistant means, and the qualitative analysis considered, the relatively satisfied evaluation results will be achieved.