Assessment of Coupling Coordination of Tourism Urbanization System in Jiangsu Province, China

As a developed coastal province in China, Jiangsu's tourism urbanization process holds significant demonstrative value for regional sustainable development. This study constructs a novel evaluation system integrating tourism industry, urbanization, and ecological environment subsystems. Employing the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for initial weighting and entropy method optimization for scientific parameter weighting, it calculates coupling and coordination degrees among subsystems. The median segmentation method identifies developmental stages. Applying this AHP-entropy-coupling coordination model quantitatively assessed 13 prefecture-level cities. Key findings reveal: All cities achieved intermediate coupling (>0.4), confirming high subsystem interrelation; Spatial coupling displayed a distinct bimodal pattern with peaks in northern/southern regions flanking a central trough; Overall coordination levels remained low, with most cities in low-to-intermediate ranges; Six coordination combinations emerged: Southern Jiangsu achieved coordinated development, while Northern and Central cities exhibited disorder. The study proposes differentiated strategies: Regions undergoing rapid urbanization must prioritize infrastructure development and ecological conservation to prevent low-level subsystem constraints. Conversely, areas with stabilized urbanization rates should leverage tourism's driving effects on urbanization and ecology to foster high-level synergy. This integrated approach provides a methodological framework for optimizing regional sustainable development through balanced tourism-urbanization-ecology interactions.