Developing an interactive decision support system for sustainable coastal tourism of Cijin, Taiwan

Abstract

Cijin is a popular destination of Taiwan tourists looking for a little beachside relaxation close at hand. With its abundant recreational resources and easy accessibility, the small island of Cijin has attracted several million tourists. Although the highly developed tourism has brought economic benefit, it has also brought heavy pollution and unbalanced development which severely degrade the coastal environment. It is very important to achieve a balance between economic development and environmental protection while developing coastal tourism. This study has tried to develop an interactive decision support system (Decision Support System) for effectively integrating management by the system dynamics (SD). The SD model, based on the DPSIR (Driving force, Pressure, State, Impact and Response) indicator set, was formulated for integrating the cross-linkage factors of the problem. The DSS, which has user-friendly interface, allows decision makers to easily perform the scenario analysis of sustainable coastal tourism management under the DPSIR framework. Several policies will be presented in this paper using the DSS to assess their performances in terms of sustainable development of the coastal tourism in Cijin, Taiwan. © 2014 IEEE.