Exploring the Coordination and Spatial–Temporal Characteristics of the Tourism–Economy–Environment Development in the Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomeration, China

The rise of mass tourism has encouraged rapid economic growth; meanwhile, the eco-environmental system has come under increasing pressure. To achieve sustainable development, it is critical to deeply explore the relationship and evolution characteristics between three subsystems: tourism, the economy, and the eco-environment. This study aims to develop a more comprehensive indicator system for evaluating the coupling coordination degree (CCD) of the tourism–economy–environment (TEE) system using statistical data from nine cities in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) urban agglomeration from 2010 to 2019. We investigated the spatial–temporal evolution characteristics and driving forces of the TEE system in the PRD using the CCD model and the geo-detector model. The research results show the following: (1) The comprehensive benefits of the TEE system have increased steadily over the past 10 years, whereas the benefits of the eco-environment subsystem have fluctuated and been relatively unstable. (2) Spatially, in terms of tourism development, the eastern regions of the PRD are more developed than the western regions, and the regions with the greatest tourism benefits have gradually shifted to the northeastern regions of the PRD. Economic development presented an imbalanced but relatively stable spatial pattern. Guangzhou and Shenzhen have been the two most economically developed cities over the past 10 years. The eco-environment development has fluctuated over time, revealing a spatial pattern of cities with low environmental benefits in the center and cities with high eco-environmental benefits in the surrounding regions. (3) The PRD’s TEE system has become more integrated, moving from moderate disorder to a model of high-quality coordinated development, demonstrating a spatial pattern in which the cities of high development coordination are located near the Pearl River Estuary, and the coordination decreases the further away they are from the estuary. (4) The major driving factors of heterogeneous TEE coordination development include eco-environment protection, opening-up policies, education investment, technological innovation level, and the regional economic development level. The results are expected to effectively promote economic, tourism, and environmental improvement in the PRD, as well as to provide policy recommendations for coordinated TEE development in other similar urban agglomerations.