Vulnerability–Resilience of Tourism Industry System Under Crisis: Dissipative Structure Perspective

Amid escalating global crises, tourism sustainability is threatened by heightened industry vulnerability, yet the intrinsic coupling of tourism industry vulnerability (TIV) and resilience (TIR) remains underexplored via systemic theoretical frameworks. This study aimed to define TIV/TIR as industry-specific constructs and develop an integrated analytical model grounded in dissipative structure theory to characterize tourism systems’ crisis responses. We selected Southwest China’s ethnic minority regions (Guizhou, Guangxi, Yunnan) as cases, using 2015–2024 prefecture-level panel data to explores the spatio-temporal differentiation characteristics of TIV/TIR. Results revealed severe COVID-19-induced TIV surges in 2020–2021, followed by rapid TIR rebounds; TIV and TIR exhibited a significant negative correlation with regional heterogeneity. Most cities showed high TIV–low TIR, with Guizhou displaying negative TIV-TIR spatial autocorrelation and Guangxi–Yunnan showing TIR clustering; inter-city TIV disparities widened while TIR levels converged, leading to a low-vulnerability, balanced-resilience tourism system by 2024. This research introduces the novel sensitivity-adaptive capacity-recovery (SACR) framework, advancing understanding of TIV-TIR dynamics and providing targeted empirical insights for tourism resilience building and sustainable development in resource-dependent destinations.