In our rapidly urbanizing world, the problem of rurality versus urbanization is becoming a source of concern. Rural tourism development may become a new important stimulus for promoting a sustainable transformation of the farmers’ livelihood. This calls for a smart specialization in rural tourism where the focus is on a balanced rural revitalization strategy. As part of the empirical research, this paper introduces a livelihood sustainability index. This index helps to construct a balanced system for the evaluation of livelihood sustainability achievements in rural tourism destinations. It is based on livelihood capital, livelihood strategy, and the interlinkage between livelihood and environment, in order to dynamically assess the livelihood sustainability of rural households. Taking Huangpi District of the Wuhan area in China as our applied case study, the livelihood sustainability index appears to show over the past years a significant rise, based on a comprehensive index method, an entropy method, and a coupling coordination model. Our findings show that the development of rural tourism has clearly promoted livelihood sustainability. This has inter alia resulted in the accumulation of livelihood capital, an asset of which both social and cultural capital have benefitted greatly; livelihood strategies have also improved, and therefore so have livelihood diversity and stability; and finally, the interlinkage and coordination degree between livelihood and the environment has also changed positively from a primary to intermediate balanced development. However, the livelihood sustainability index in the area concerned is still relatively low, and has not yet reached its possible optimal level. Hence, there is still much room for improvement. Various approaches can be proposed to achieve a more sustainable livelihood, such as enhancing livelihood capital; narrowing the economic gap between farmers by participating in professional tourism activity; establishing the mechanism of industrial integration and the development of rural eco-tourism; and coordinating a balanced development of livelihood and environmental quality.

Cross-border flows of people, capital, and information along with inbound tourism flows can act as an important vehicle that benefits the innovation system in tourism destination areas. This study addresses the unintended but far-reaching impact of international tourism by focusing on the influence of inbound tourism on regional innovation in China. Data from 30 Chinese provinces for the years 2003–2012 are used for the empirical analysis, employing a spatial panel data model. The results show that inbound tourism may be a new and powerful driving force for regional innovation, while the effect of inbound tourism on technological innovation appears to be weaker than that on social innovation. Our findings also show that a higher market percentage of domestic tourism may weaken the impact of inbound tourism. Furthermore, the impact of inbound tourism on innovation tends to be relatively stronger in the richer and more internationally oriented provinces of China.

Rapid expansion in Mongolia has resulted in an inequality in livelihood, growing air pollution, and unevenly distributed social goods, which implies that the urbanization of Mongolia is experiencing a chronic imbalance. Using 21 Aimags and 1 capital in Mongolia as the research object, this paper provides a detailed assessment of the coupling coordination degree (CCD) to analyze the coupling and coordination relationship between urbanization and urban residents’ livelihood level. The results suggest that there is a serious imbalance in the coordination of urban development and urban residents’ livelihood among the Aimags of Mongolia. The high CCD values were mainly concentrated in the central regions of Mongolia, while the low values were clustered in the western and eastern areas. The spatial Durbin model was employed to analyze the driving forces of the CCD, and the results imply that the secondary industry share and the number of registered enterprises play significant roles in promoting coordination between urbanization and urban residents’ livelihood level. Here, we present an overview of how our analysis can provide useful insights for policymakers and decision makers.