Spatiotemporal Evolution and Determinants of Tourism Efficiency in Outstanding Tourism Cities of the Yellow River Basin

The Yellow River Basin is a vital ecological security barrier for China, as well as a region rich in cultural and tourism resources. Tourism has emerged as a core industry underpinning both ecological conservation and sustainable, high-quality regional development within the basin. As the tourism industry transitions toward sustainable and high-quality development, tourism efficiency serves not only as a core indicator for measuring the quality of tourism development but also as a critical basis for assessing regional tourism sustainability. Taking 68 Outstanding Tourism Cities in the Yellow River Basin from 2009 to 2023 as research samples, this study employs the Super-Slack-Based Measure (Super-SBM) model to measure tourism efficiency. It depicts the spatiotemporal evolution through trend surface analysis, spatial autocorrelation analysis, hotspot analysis, and standard deviation ellipses and utilizes the Geographically and Temporally Weighted Regression (GTWR) model to identify the determinants of spatiotemporal heterogeneity. Tourism efficiency in the basin’s Outstanding Tourism Cities is generally low but has a variably increasing trend with a pronounced spatial gradient of upstream > midstream > downstream. The efficiency of tourism is highly interdependent spatially and highly clustered, as the regional high and low values are mostly situated up- and downstream, respectively. In general, the center of tourism efficiency has changed to the southwest instead of the northeast. The infrastructure, industrial structure and human capital characterize the efficiency of tourism, but the openness to the external world is the most significant factor, and the impact of these factors also varies sharply in terms of their strength. This study systematically reveals the spatiotemporal evolution patterns and heterogeneous driving mechanisms of tourism efficiency in Outstanding Tourism Cities within the Yellow River Basin. It not only expands the research perspectives and empirical analytical frameworks for sustainable tourism development at the basin scale but also provides a precise decision-making basis for the coordinated advancement of sustainable and high-quality tourism development in the region.