Research on the spatio-temporal evolution and prediction of tourism ecological resilience in the yellow river basin

• The overall tourism ecological resilience is at a relatively low level, but it shows a fluctuating increasing trend on the whole. • The average resilience of each basin segment is manifested as downstream>upstream>Midstream. • At the spatial level, the TER presents a spatial distribution pattern of "peripheral-core". • In terms of spatio-temporal transfer characteristics, the state transfer of tourism ecological resilience has strong stability, with obvious path dependence and state locking. • In terms of development trend prediction, the future development trend of tourism ecological resilience is relatively optimistic. Tourism ecological resilience (TER) is a key indicator for measuring the sustainable development capacity of a tourist destination. Enhancing TER is crucial for promoting the sustainable development of the tourism industry. Based on the data of the nine provinces in the Yellow River Basin from 2006 to 2022, the entropy weight TOPSIS method, three-dimensional Kernel density estimation, traditional Markov and spatial Markov transition probability matrices were adopted to analyze the spatio-temporal evolution pattern and future change trend of TER. The results show that: (1) The overall TER is at a relatively low level, but it shows a fluctuating increasing trend on the whole. The average resilience of each basin segment is manifested as downstream>upstream>midstream. At the spatial level, the TER presents a spatial distribution pattern of "peripheral-core". (2) In terms of spatio-temporal transfer characteristics, the state transfer of TER has strong stability, with obvious path dependence and state locking. The neighborhood background significantly plays a role in the state transfer of TER. (3) In terms of development trend prediction, the future development trend of TER is relatively optimistic. The TER level along the route gradually increases over time and converges towards a high-resilience range.