Advancing Sustainable Development Through Urban Tourism: A Reflective Analysis of SDG 8.9 and 17 in Nanyang City, China

This study investigates how urban tourism contributes to sustainable development, with a focus on SDGs 8.9 and 17 in Nanyang City. Drawing on a reflective measurement model and employing Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), this study examines the impact of urban tourism on cultural promotion, employment creation, and multi-stakeholder collaboration. A total of 300 surveys were collected from locals and visitors across Nanyang City to analyze these relationships. The results suggest that urban tourism promotes economic development but is also a means to preserve cultural heritage, and in turn directly supports SDG 8.9 for sustainable tourism, leading to job creation and local culture preservation. The analysis also shows that collaboration among governments, private organizations, and local communities is needed to achieve effective urban tourism governance, as stated in SDG 17. This study contributes a novel theoretical development to the literature, relating SDG-based governance with local tourism dynamics whilst providing an emic perspective of how mid-sized Chinese cities like Nanyang City, through collaborative and inclusive governance of tourism, put SDGs 8.9 and 17 into practice. The results contribute to current tourism–SDG frameworks by showing how the presence of local cultural endowments and decentralized governance structures homogenizes a specific pathway toward sustainable urban tourism. Additionally, the results provided practical guidance for tourism practitioners and policymakers on how to increase urban tourism systems’ diversity, inclusiveness, and resilience. This study’s limitations, being restricted to a single city with a small sample and a lack of longitudinal follow-up, may make findings difficult to generalize.