ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Tour.
Sec. Ecotourism
Integrated Delphi-Entropy Framework for Sustainable Rural Tourism: Evidence from Shaanxi Province, China (2018-2023)
Provisionally accepted
- University of Science Malaysia (USM), Penang, Malaysia
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Purpose: Rural tourism development evaluation requires comprehensive frameworks that integrate subjective expert knowledge with objective data characteristics. This study develops an innovative Delphi-entropy hybrid approach for sustainable rural tourism assessment. Methods: We constructed a 30-indicator evaluation system across four dimensions (Innovation & Culture, Economy & Infrastructure, Eco-Environment, Tourism & Livelihood) using two-round Delphi expert consultations and Shannon entropy weighting. The framework was applied to Shaanxi Province, China, using statistical yearbook data from 2018-2023. Results: The integrated evaluation reveals a statistically significant U-shaped development trajectory (quadratic regression: β2 = 0.013, p = 0.035; R2 = 0.785), with comprehensive indices declining by 93.4% from 0.271 (2018) to 0.018 (2020) during the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by gradual recovery to 0.044 (2023). This decline magnitude substantially exceeds international averages (55-85%). The exceptional severity reflects China-specific policy stringency during the zero-COVID period. Culture industry investment growth emerged as the highest-weighted indicator (25.1%). This reflects high discriminatory power and validates its theoretical significance for Shaanxi's heritage-based tourism model. Eco-environmental dimensions showed consistent improvement (scores from 0.72 to 0.89). Comprehensive sensitivity analysis confirms robustness: weight perturbations of ±30% maintain rank correlations ¿0.92, validating principal findings across alternative methodological assumptions. Implications: The methodology provides a replicable framework for regional tourism assessment, supporting evidence-based policy formulation. Results indicate the critical importance of innovation investment and environmental sustainability in rural tourism resilience, with significant policy implications for post-pandemic recovery strategies. Originality: This research contributes the first comprehensive Delphi-entropy integration for rural tourism evaluation, offering methodological innovations for multi-criteria decision-making in sustainable tourism development.
Keywords: Regional development evaluation, Information entropy theory, Expert consensus methodology, multi-criteria evaluation, sustainable development, Tourism resilience, Pandemic Impact Assessment, heritage tourism
Received: 28 Oct 2025; Accepted: 25 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhao and Jaafar. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Mastura Jaafar
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