Vol. 1 No. 2

Research article

Research on Tourism Environmental Economy of Hainan Free Trade Port: Evolution Context, Hotspot Review and Frontier Prospect

Published 2026-09-30

  • Zining Wang

Zining Wang
Hainan College of Vocation and Technique

Abstract

As the highest form of opening-up in the global contemporary economy, the free trade port undertakes the strategic function of promoting institutional reform and high-quality regional development through opening-up. As the core experimental field of China’s open economic system with Chinese characteristics, Hainan Free Trade Port (Hainan FTP) deeply integrates tourism, ecological environment and economic development in its construction process, forming a unique research field of tourism environmental economy. Taking the tourism environmental economy of Hainan FTP as the research object, this paper systematically sorts out the historical evolution of relevant research from the exploration stage of special economic zone and the construction stage of international tourism island to the implementation stage of free trade port strategy. It reviews four core hot topics, including duty-free consumption and international tourism consumption center construction, rural tourism and rural revitalization, tourism land use and ecological environment governance, and digital economy and high-quality tourism development. On this basis, this study prospects the frontier research directions of in-depth institutional opening, digital intelligent transformation, regional coordinated development and international comparative research. The results show that existing literature presents phased characteristics dominated by policy interpretation, prioritized by institutional innovation and legal guarantee, and gradually popularized by quantitative evaluation. However, research on the dynamic evolution of the coupled tourism-environment-economy system, factor allocation efficiency and multi-agent collaborative governance is still insufficient. This paper provides a systematic literature review and research gap enlightenment for theoretical deepening and policy optimization of tourism environmental economy research on Hainan FTP.

Keywords

Free Trade Port, Tourism industry, Environmental economy, Evolution context, Research hotspot, Frontier prospect

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