There is a complex relationship between leisure tourism and the ecological environment that is both interdependent and constrained. It is of great practical importance to reveal their incongruous coupling to promote ecological security and harmonious social development. Utilizing a framework model of a non-coordinated coupling driving mechanism, we have established a comprehensive evaluation index system, encompassing the three dimensions of leisure tourism resource quality, infrastructure, and economic benefits, as well as three dimensions related to ecological environment pressure, protection investment, and efficiency. We calculated the weights of each evaluation index using the coefficient of variation method and employed a non-coordinated coupling function to analyze the coupling relationship and evolution of leisure tourism and the ecological environment in the Ili region of Xinjiang. The results suggest the following: ① The level of leisure and tourism in the Ili Prefecture has exhibited fluctuations and steady growth, increasing from 0.0032 in 2001 to 0.9033 in 2022. Similarly, the ecological environment has also improved, from 0.2372 in 2001 to 0.7755 in 2022, except for a slight decrease in 2008, showing an upward trend throughout all other years. ② The coupling coordination type has undergone three significant stages of transformation: from 2001 to 2002, the degree of non-coordinated coupling decreased from 0.8825 to 0.8229, marking a high-level non-coordinated coupling phase; from 2003 to 2016, the degree of non-coordinated coupling further decreased from 0.7951 to 0.5098, entering a rectification phase; and from 2017 to 2022, the degree of non-coordinated coupling dropped from 0.4882 to 0.3531, moving into an antagonistic phase, with the relationship gradually evolving towards positive interaction. By analyzing the non-coordinated coupling and internal mechanisms between leisure tourism and the ecological environment in the Ili region, this study provides a scientific reference for promoting the sustainable and healthy development of leisure tourism and the ecological environment in the region.

Promoting the green development of the tourism industry is a crucial pathway for achieving coordinated progress in ecological civilization development and industrial transformation and upgrading. Based on panel data for 16 prefecture-level cities in Anhui Province from 2011 to 2022, this study constructs an “inputs–desirable outputs–undesirable outputs” indicator system, measures city-level tourism eco-efficiency (TEE) using a super-efficiency SBM model incorporating undesirable outputs, decomposes provincial disparities and their sources using the Theil index and its decomposition, and further identifies city-specific heterogeneity in influencing factors by employing a panel variable-coefficient fixed-effects model. The results show that: (1) Anhui’s TEE exhibited an overall fluctuating upward trend during 2011–2022, with provincial efficiency values ranging from 1.465 (2016) to 1.500 (2022), and a more pronounced rebound after 2017; (2) spatially, TEE displays a pattern of “higher in the south, lower in the north, with a central uplift,” with southern Anhui cities such as Huangshan and Xuancheng performing relatively well, while many northern Anhui cities lag behind; (3) Theil decomposition indicates that overall disparities are driven mainly by within-region differences, whereas between-region differences contribute relatively little; and (4) influencing factors are markedly heterogeneous: scale- and affluence-related variables promote TEE in core cities such as Hefei, but tend to inhibit it in cities such as Bozhou, Anqing, Chuzhou, and Wuhu. The mechanisms associated with technology and structural variables are more complex; in particular, the expansion of energy consumption exerts a significantly negative effect on TEE in most cities and constitutes a common constraint on efficiency improvement, while the effects of R&D investment, digitalization, and the share of the tertiary sector vary across cities. Accordingly, policy efforts should prioritize energy-efficiency improvement and low-carbon substitution at the provincial level while implementing differentiated, city-specific pathways at the municipal level to jointly advance the low-carbon transition and high-quality development of the tourism industry.