Tourism eco-efficiency is an important indicator to measure the sustainable development of tourism with the core objective of "minimum resource input and environmental damage, maximum economic and social output". This paper explores the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of tourism eco-efficiency and its influencing factors in Fujian Province from 2011 to 2020 by combining the unexpected output Super-SBM model, gravity center model, standard deviation ellipse, and optimal parameters-based geographical detector model. The results are as follows. Tourism eco-efficiency in Fujian Province showed an overall fluctuating growth trend with an increase of 160.065% during the study period. The coefficient of variation of tourism eco-efficiency tends to fluctuate and decrease, and regional differences narrow. The spatial differentiation is remarkable, and it presents the spatial distribution characteristics of "Xiamen > Nanping > Quanzhou > Fuzhou > Longyan > Ningde > Sanming > Zhangzhou > Putian". The spatial pattern of tourism eco-efficiency is obvious in the direction of "northeast-southwest", and the trajectory of the center of gravity is "southwest-northeast-northwest", with spatial characteristics tending towards agglomeration. Tourism industry structure has the greatest impact on tourism eco-efficiency, followed by education level, urbanization level, technology innovation level, infrastructure investment, and economic development level. This study provides reference suggestions for improving tourism eco-efficiency which helps to promote adequate, balanced, and sustainable development of the regional tourism industry.
© 2023. The Author(s).