2-Tuple DEMATEL for Complex Interrelationships Analysis: Barriers Identification, Cause-Effect Analysis and Policy Implications for Sustainable Tourism Industry

Tourism industry plays an important role in China’s economy growth; however, there are many interviewed and interacted barriers hindering the development of China’s tourism industry. The objective of this study is to investigate the barriers hindering the development of China’s tourism industry, develop an improved DEMATEL method to study the cause-effect relationships among these barriers and identify the critical barriers according to their relative importance. Ten barriers including weak industrial foundation, leisure consciousness, lack of policy support, lack of complete infrastructure, staff quality, lack collaborations among tourism enterprises, lack of innovations, governance and management ability, weak tourism brand, incomplete legal and regulation system, and insufficient governmental investment, were studied in this paper, and the 2-tuple DEMATEL was employed to analyze the complex relationships among these barriers and rank these barriers, and some policy implications were presented to China’s decision-makers for them to promote the development of China’s tourism industry.