Sustainable Tourism Optimization Based on an Improved Ramsey Model: A Case Study of Juneau

Tourism development has brought both economic vitality and environmental challenges to destinations worldwide. This essay addresses the issue of over-tourism in Juneau, Alaska, by constructing a sustainable tourism optimization model that integrates economic, social, and environmental factors. Using an improved Ramsey optimal growth model, this essay set social welfare as the objective function, constrained by tourist numbers, natural resource stock, and resident satisfaction. A hybrid method combining EWM-AHP and TOPSIS is employed to quantify resident satisfaction, while a tourism tax mechanism is introduced to model revenue feedback loops. The model yields an optimal tourist capacity of 1.63 million and a resident satisfaction level of 0.943 under maximum social welfare conditions. To test the model’s adaptability, this essay generalizes it for other regions by replacing glacier retreat with a broader natural resource depletion rate and apply it to Kyoto and Banff as case studies. Results demonstrate that sustainable tourism policies must be tailored to local ecological and economic conditions. This model provides a scalable framework for guiding tourism policy toward long-term sustainability and balanced development.