Analyzing the Spatiotemporal Dynamics and Driving Mechanisms of Island Tourism: A Case Study of Hainan Island, China

Given the constraints inherent to island tourism resources, optimizing their allocation and utilization scientifically and efficiently has emerged as a critical challenge for both academic inquiry and policy-making. This study investigates pathways to enhance island tourism sustainability through the development of mathematical models quantifying tourism intensity, efficiency, and resource abundance, utilizing multi-source heterogeneous data on tourism resources in Hainan from 2012 to 2022. The study reveals that: (1) The spatial structure of tourism development progressed from an initial “north–south dual-core driven, fragmented in the west” pattern, through an intermediate “north–south dual-core driven, fragmented in the east” phase, and ultimately evolved into a “north–south dual-core driven, east–west isolated” configuration. (2) Spatiotemporal evolution of Hainan Island’s tourism industry is driven by a combination of policy interventions, natural endowments, transport infrastructure, economic foundations and population size. (3) Tourism economic effects exhibit marked regional heterogeneity across Hainan. Eastern regions are strongly influenced by per capita tourism income and hotel density, whereas northern areas depend more on the tertiary industry share; significant spatial spillover effects are also observed. (4) Spatial econometric modeling further indicates that influential factors do not uniformly exert positive effects on the tourism sector and its subsystems, with indirect effects exceeding direct effects by approximately 22.41 times. Although this research underscores the importance of human–environment interactions, it does not quantify the specific ecological consequences of tourism development. Future policy should integrate an ecological footprint model within a coordinated “tourism–ecology–protection” framework to balance economic and ecological goals, while also accounting for external shocks affecting the tourism economy.