*4.2. Evaluation of the Tourism Economy's High-Quality Development (TEHQD)*

According to Formulas (2)–(5), the comprehensive evaluation value of the tourism economy's high-quality development (TEHQD) in the Yellow River Basin can be obtained, as shown in Table 5. From 2010 to 2019, the TEHQD in the Yellow River Basin showed a positive upward trend, except Shanxi, where the level of TEHQD fluctuated greatly. Other provinces had a gentle growth.

**Table 5.** Comprehensive evaluation of the tourism economy's high-quality development (TEHQD) of the nine provinces in the Yellow River Basin.


From the provincial TEHQD, it had the following three characteristics. First of all, the evaluation of TEHQD increased significantly, with an average growth rate of 3.3 times. Ningxia, Sichuan, and other western regions are developing faster because the economic development and policy dividend brought a series of advantages, such as industrial structure adjustment and tourism development, while the development speed of Shandong, Henan, and Shanxi are lower than the average level due to the eastern region as a whole entering the stage of slow development. The central region, such as Shanxi, should strive to adjust the industrial structure, change the current development mode, and pay more attention to the tourism economy's high-quality development. Secondly, the TEHQD in different provinces is more and more obvious. In 2010, there was a difference of 0.0646 between Henan (0.1573), which ranked first, and Ningxia (0.0926), which ranked last. By 2019, there was a difference of 0.1482 between Ningxia (0.4503), which ranked first, and Shandong (0.3021), which ranked last, in the comprehensive evaluation value of TEHQD. The difference in 2019 was 2.3 times of that in 2010. Thirdly, from the average value of comprehensive evaluation, there was a certain similarity between the TEHQD and the evaluation of TCEE; thus, there was a co-existing relationship to some extent.

From the perspective of the weight of each resource index of TEHQD (Table 6), the open index (0.1363) and the sharing index (0.1194) had a large weight, indicating that these two indexes play a more obvious role in promoting TEHQD in the Yellow River Basin than other indexes. However, the coordination index (0.0928) had the smallest weight; thus, in order to realize the high-quality development of the regional tourism economy in the Yellow River basin, attention should be paid to the coordinated development of regions, industries, and other aspects.

**Table 6.** Weight of the tourism economy's high-quality development (TEHQD) evaluation index of the nine provinces in the Yellow River Basin.


In terms of the innovation index, the weight of tourism R&D expenditure was the highest (0.0363), indicating that this index plays a significant role, especially for the central and western provinces such as Qinghai, Sichuan, and Shaanxi. For the economically developed eastern regions, such as Shandong, tourism R&D personnel are more important. In terms of the coordination index, the proportion of the tertiary industry in the tourism economy had the highest weight (0.0318), and the index weight of Inner Mongolia and Henan was higher than the average level of the Yellow River basin, indicating that the industrial coordination degree has brought great dividends to the high-quality development of the local tourism economy. However, the proportion of the tertiary industry of the tourism economy in Sichuan and Ningxia is very low, indicating that this index has not brought the advantage of the high-quality development of the tourism economy to the local area. The proportion of the secondary industry of the tourism economy in Sichuan

and the proportion of the primary industry of the tourism economy in Ningxia play a more important role. In terms of green indicators, the weight of each indicator is above 0.2, indicating that all indicators of green development play an important role. Among them, the weight of green coverage in built-up areas is the highest (0.0251), especially for cities with a high urbanization rate and a relatively developed economy, such as Sichuan, Henan, and Shandong. However, central and western provinces such as Qinghai, Gansu, Shaanxi, and Shanxi, with slower tourism and economic development and more serious environmental pollution, had the highest proportion of investment in environmental governance in GDP. For areas with excellent tourism development and sparse population such as Ningxia and Inner Mongolia, the contribution of tourism greening has become an important green index in TEHQD. In terms of the opening index, the foreign investment in tourism (0.0527) had the highest weight, but the foreign investment of tourism in Shanxi is relatively insufficient. The proportion of foreign tourists in the number of inbound tourists plays a more significant role in Shanxi (0.533), indicating that the proportion of foreign tourists in Shanxi is relatively large, which brings advantages to TEHQD. In terms of the sharing index, tourism per capita GDP (0.0177) had the lowest weight and needs to be strengthened.
