Tourism sustainability is a significant approach to forming a synergistic model of industry and ecology in ecologically vulnerable areas. Scientifically detecting the effect mechanism of tourism development on eco-environment resilience is important in achieving regional social-ecological system sustainability. In this work, empirical exploration is conducted on the tourism development index (TDI) and eco-environment resilience index (ERI) in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) to study the spatio-temporal heterogeneity of TDI’s effect on the ERI. The results indicate significant growth in the TDI in the YREB, with the formation of tourist clusters around Shanghai and Chongqing as the core. Although the ERI typically exhibits a declining trend, the rate of decline has notably slowed, forming a “high at the sides and low in the middle” spatial pattern. The TDI and ERI are spatially dependent in the YREB, with predominantly high-high (HH) and low-high (LH) clusters in Shanghai, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu. Conversely, upstream regions with strong eco-environmental foundations exhibit low-low (LL) and high-low (HL) clusters. In general, the TDI promotes the ERI, but there is significant spatio-temporal heterogeneity in the YREB. Positive impact regions are expanding, while negative impact regions are shrinking. These results could provide scientific evidence for differentiated classification and control policies in the YREB.

The resilience of a tourism environmental system (TESR) is an important aspect of sustainable tourism growth. Based on the construction of an evaluation system for the TESR, this study used 126 prefecture-level cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) as a case study and attempted to explore the spatio-temporal evolution features and influencing mechanism of the TESR. The primary conclusions are as follows: (1) Despite significant improvement in TESR in the YREB, the overall resilience level and growth rate remain relatively low, with ample potential for improvement. (2) Positive spatial correlation and type agglomeration impact are evident in the urban TESR. (3) Relatively frequent transitions of the TESR occur with spatial dependence and spillover effects in the transition paths, i.e., high-level cities can improve the TESR of neighboring cities through positive spillover effects. (4) Several factors, such as city economic, social, industrial, and policy factors, jointly impact the evolution of the pattern of the TESR in the YREB, with heterogeneous effects.