Development of ice and snow tourism destinations in China: ecological security assessment and obstacle degree analysis

This study proposes an integrated multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method to evaluate the ecological safety of Chinese ice and snow tourism destinations. To improve current methods, we propose an effective evaluation technique that incorporates the DPSIR model, entropy method, Delphi method, rough set, and TOPSIS method in a challenging environment. The indicator weights for the data were determined using the entropy method. The rough set matrix was constructed based on the rough set theory, and positive and negative ideal solutions were then determined. The study aimed to calculate and rank the ecological safety of six ice and snow tourism destinations in China using the modified rough-TOPSIS method. The results show that the Aoshan area is critically unsafe, the Chongli area is relatively safe, and the remaining four areas are mostly safe. The paper presents an analysis of the factors that hinder ecological security in ice and snow tourism destinations using the obstacle degree model. The results show that R22 (0.7368) has the most significant impact on Shennongjia. Additionally, S14 (0.5727) directly impedes the ecological security of Yunshangcaoyuan. The presence of P11 (0.4658) in Beidahu hampers its ecological security development.