Annotatsiya:

Abstract: Sustainable development of desert tourism in arid regions is a process of synergistic advancement of three goals: ecosystem protection, tourism industry development, and community well-being improvement. This paper takes the Mutetar Desert Scenic Area as an example, using thematic analysis to systematically examine the coupling mechanism, internal tensions, and adjustment paths of the ecological, industrial, and community integration development of desert tourism. The study finds that the scenic area has initially formed a coupling framework of ecological management, industrial cultivation, and community embedding, achieving phased synergy of the three goals through infrastructure development, asset-light operation, and local employment absorption. However, structural tensions exist among these three aspects, manifested in the erosion of the original desert landscape by excessive development on the periphery, the constraint of industrial competitiveness by homogenization of business formats, and the challenges to sustainable community participation posed by a single employment structure and excessively high labor intensity.