CONSTRUCTION OF AN EVALUATION INDEX SYSTEM FOR ECOTOURISM DEVELOPMENT POTENTIAL IN JIANGSU PROVINCE

Ecotourism is an important direction for the development of new tourism as it emphasizes environmental protection and rationaluse of ecological resources. This model has played a positive and powerful role in promoting the development of regions with rich ecological resources and lagging economic development. Taking Jiangsu Province as an example, this article has evaluated its overall potential in ecotourism development. With a reference to relevant literature and previous research methods, expert scoring method and analytic hierarchy process were adopted to construct the ecotourism evaluation index system, and calculate the weight of each factor index. On this basis, the weighted average method was employed to build an evaluation model to assess the overall ecotourism development potential of Jiangsu Province. The results showed that: 1. Jiangsu Province enjoys superior geographical location and rich natural and human ecotourism resources, so it has high tourism development value, but at the same time, special attention shall be paid to the ecological vulnerability of its northern region. 2. For ecotourism development in specific areas, special consideration should be given to the ecological vulnerability of the northern region. The model and research ideas constructed in this paper have practical significance for more specific research and evaluation in guiding the development of regional ecotourism resources.