Assessing the climate change adaptation of Sam Son city to guide tourism development using AHP model

Abstract

The tourism industry in Vietnam is developing rapidly and making significant contributions to the country's economy. However, tourism is also facing challenges related to climate change, especially coastal tourism. The article presents the adaptive capacity of Sam Son city in the development of the tourism industry in respond to the impact of climate change. The adaptive capacity of the Thanh Hoa city is constrained by three groups of factors, including infrastructure, socio-economic, and policy mechanisms. This article employs a GIS (Geographic Information System) technology approach and an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model to spatialize and quantify the adaptive capacity factors. Among the adaptive factors, the group of policy mechanism factors has the highest weight contributing to the adaptive capacity of Sam Son, with weights ranging from 0.25÷0.29. Meanwhile, the factor of the percentage of households with solid houses contributes insignificantly to adaptive capacity with a weight of 0.04. The study results in Sam Son city show that: The Adaptive Capacity (AC) index of the Sam Son city in guiding the development of the tourism industry is affected by the impact of climate change ranging from 0.28÷0.72, belonging to three levels: low (AC = 0.0÷0.30) was found in 6/11 communes and wards, medium (AC = 0.31÷0.63) was found in 7/11 communes and wards, and high (AC = 0.64÷1.0) was found in 3/11 communes and wards. Overall assessment, the AC of Sam Son city, Thanh Hoa province is at an average level in condition of climate change