Abstract:

In order to evaluate tourism competition of the National Forest Parks, this paper proposed a tourism niche overlap theory and models based on the niche theory. Based on a field survey, an evaluation index system of tourism niche was established with Delphi and AHP methods. The system was used to measure the tourism competition between Zhangjiajie National Forest Park and Tianmenshan National Forest Park with the tourism niche overlap models. The results showed that: the tourism niche overlap of Zhangjiajie and Tianmenshan National Forest Park was 0.190 4 and showed there was no apparent tourism competition. But there exited competition between Zhangjiajie and Tianmenshan National Forest Park with tourism resource and tourism service, resource location, infrastructure service and tourism information service, entertainment, shopping, free traffic, the degree of communication network, advocacy effort and resource to promote environmental protection because the tourism niche overlap between Zhangjiajie and Tianmenshan National Forest Park was 0.320 5, 0.327 5, 0.623 2, 0.487 0, 0.471 0,0.608 1, 0.540 7, 0.637 9, 0.615 2, 0.993 6. Both Zhangjiajie and Tianmenshan National Forest Park should avoid the tourism competition of these indicators in the future.

Key words: niche, tourism niche, tourism competition, National Forest Park