Abstract：Tourism efficiency is an important indicator to measure the high-quality development of tourism economy. Identifying the spatial network structure characteristics of urban tourism efficiency in the Yellow River Basin is of great significance to promote the high-quality development of tourism in the Yellow River Basin. SBM-DEA model is utilized in this paper to measure the tourism efficiency of 98 prefecture-level cities in the Yellow River Basin from 2007 to 2018. Also， the modified gravity is introduced to analyze the spatial correlation strength between cities. Then， using social network analysis methods the characteristics and evolution of its spatial correlation networks are revealed with its influencing factors discussed. The result shows as follows. 1) The overall development trend of the spatial correlation network is good， but the development speed is slow.The core cities in the spatial network are mostly located in the middle and lower reaches， and the upstream cities are basically in an “island” state. 2)The agglomeration mode of spatial association network shows a “local aggregation， global looseness” pattern. The diffusion effect of the network core area is unstable and limited， and a stable spatial network structure has not yet been formed. 3)Factors such as geographic proximity， tourism development level， infrastructure level and regional industrial structure have a significant role in promoting the formation of spatial association networks.It's proposed that the coordinated development of cities in the Yellow River basin is required to be promoted from the national and local levels， forming a hierarchical network development path of central city-urban circle-urban agglomeration-regional city network， and promoting the integrated construction and upgrade of tourism development elements.
2022, Vol. 56 
