Measurement and Evaluation of the Development Level of Health and Wellness Tourism from the Perspective of High-Quality Development

• Published in: Sustainability Vol. 16; no. 18; p. 8082
• Main Authors: Pan, Huali, Mi, Huanhuan, Chen, Yanhua, Chen, Ziyan, Zhou, Weizhong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.09.2024
• Subjects: Aging; Economic development; Economic growth; Environmental protection; Evaluation; Health aspects; Health care; Income distribution; Medical tourism; Political parties; Quality management; Sales promotions; Tourism; Travel industry; China; Thailand
• ISSN: 2071-1050; 2071-1050
• DOI: 10.3390/su16188082

In recent years, with the dramatic surge in the demand for health and elderly care services, the emergence of the health dividend has presented good development opportunities for health and wellness tourism. However, as a sector of the economy, health and wellness tourism still faces numerous challenges in achieving high-quality development. Therefore, this paper focuses on 31 provinces in China and constructs a multidimensional evaluation index system for the high-quality development of health and wellness tourism. The global entropy-weighted TOPSIS method and cluster analysis are used to conduct in-depth measurements, regional comparisons, and classification evaluations of the high-quality development of health and wellness tourism in each province. The research results indicate that: (1) From a quality perspective, the level of health and wellness tourism development in 11 provinces in China has exceeded the national average, while the remaining 20 provinces are below the national average. (2) From a regional perspective, the current level of high-quality development in health and wellness tourism decreases sequentially from the eastern to the central to the western regions, with significant regional differences. (3) Overall, the development in the 31 provinces can be categorized into five types: the High-Quality Benchmark Type, the High-Quality Stable Type, the High-Quality Progressive Type, the General-Quality Potential Type, and the General-Quality Lagging Type. (4) From a single-dimension analysis perspective, there are significant differences in the rankings of each province across different dimensions. Finally, this paper enriches and expands the theoretical foundation on the high-quality development of health and wellness tourism; on the other hand, it puts forward targeted countermeasures and suggestions to help promote the comprehensive enhancement of health and wellness tourism.