How do natural and socio-economic factors influence the sustainable development of the ecological environment in the World Natural Heritage Sites? Evidence from the Jiuzhaigou, China

With the rapid development of tourism in the World Natural Heritage Sites (WNHSs), it made ecological environment issues increasingly become prominent while boosting regional economic development. Exploring the influence and evolution of natural and socio-economic factors will help to maintain the authenticity and integrity of the WNHSs, and promote sustainable development. Here, to better understand the sustainable development situation of the WNHSs, we construct a nature-society-based comprehensive evaluation framework, and combining the remote sensing-based ecological index (RSEI) with the spatial autocorrelation model, and employed the obstacle factor diagnostic model, to reveal the spatial-temporal characteristics and the key driving factor of ecological environment in the Jiuzhaigou. Meanwhile, we assess the integrated ecological sensitivity of the Jiuzhaigou and determine the key conservation area. Through the analysis of results, we find that RSEI from 2013 to 2020 exhibits a fluctuation trend resembling an "N-shape", high RSEI points tend to cluster in the southern part of the study area, while low RSEI points cluster in the northern part, it has a significant spatial heterogeneity. We shed further light on that when the number of tourists exceeds the population carrying capacity of the heritage site, the negative impacts of tourism development on the natural environment will outweigh the positive impacts of tourism revenue growth on regional economic development and constrain the sustainable development of the site as a whole. Specifically, dissolved oxygen concentration in water, nitrogen dioxide concentration, and noise are the main drivers of nature. The proportion of tertiary industry, fixed asset investment, and total tourism consumption are the main drivers of society. Furthermore, the ecological sensitivity of Jiuzhaigou is moderately low. Therefore, we suggest that the government should improve and refine the existing disaster early warning mechanism, dynamically adjust and control the number of tourists received per day, harmonize the relationship between economic development and environmental protection, and strengthen the protection of authenticity and integrity in areas of high ecological sensitivity.