Tourist Rescue in Natural Disasters

In recent years, the tourism industry has expanded rapidly and China will enter the mass tourism era comprehensively, with tourism becoming an important leisure lifestyle for people. However, natural disasters have the characteristics of high frequency, multiple types, wide distribution and large post-disaster losses, which often cause huge impact on tourism industry development. It is of great practical significance to explore the key factors for successful rescue of tourists after disasters. Taking the Wenchuan earthquake as an example, the article selects the Fuzzy Delphi Method and the Analytical Hierarchy Process as the data analysis method, and also randomly selects the local residents of 20 affected scenic spots as the research subjects. The results show that among the assessment dimensions, the most important dimension is prevention, followed by preparedness, response and recovery respectively. Meanwhile, among the 16 assessment indicators, the top five most valued indicators were regional emergency planning, management systems, prompt notification, publicity and education, training and emergency drill in order. Plain Language Summary In recent years, the tourism industry has expanded rapidly and China will enter the mass tourism era comprehensively, with tourism becoming an important leisure lifestyle for people. This article selects the Fuzzy Delphi Method and the Analytical Hierarchy Process as the data analysis method, and also randomly selects the local resi-dents of 20 affected scenic spots as the research subjects. The results show that among the assessment dimensions, the most important dimension is prevention, followed by preparedness, response and re-covery respectively. Meanwhile, among the 16 assessment indicators, the top five most valued indi-cators were regional emergency planning, management systems, prompt notification, publicity and education, training and emergency drill in order.


Introduction
In the 1960s and 1970s, the traditional way of productivity development was based on the large-scale exploitation and utilization of natural resources.In the early years of China's existence, its industrial production base was very weak.In order to raise the standard of living of the general population as quickly as possible, to meet the growing material and cultural needs of the people and to accelerate the narrowing of the gap with the developed countries of the West, it had to follow a path of largescale exploitation of natural resources.Although decades of rapid development had been achieved, serious ecological problems had been created.This has led to a disruption of the material transformation between man and nature, which has caused many ecological problems.People gradually realize that human beings' excessive demand for natural resources and wanton destruction of the ecological environment make themselves face the dilemma of resource depletion and environmental deterioration.In recent years, there have been many geological changes caused by human production practices, such as mudslides, ground subsidence and landslides.Even though the occurrence of natural disasters cannot be attributed entirely to human activities, when catastrophes such as floods, tsunamis and earthquakes strike, they have a huge impact on the safety of people's lives and property and pose a serious threat to human civilization.The disasters cause the loss of human lives and physical assets, the effects of which are further reflected in social settings, ecosystems and the economic wellbeing of people (Peng et al., 2021).In the aftermath of disasters, the most urgent need is for systematic postdisaster reconstruction, aimed at repairing human systems.This is a matter of economic and social security and stability.It is not only necessary to restore and rebuild the ground infrastructure, but also to provide supporting psychotherapy to soothe the psychological trauma of the victims.Resilience is defined as an ability to survive, absorb, acclimatize, adapt to, change and recover from the hazard effects in a timely and efficient manner (Lu et al., 2022).
With the leap forward improvement of the level of economic development and the increasing improvement of people's living standards, tourism has developed and expanded rapidly.Tourism has become one of the indispensable ways of life and leisure for residents, and the proportion of people participating in and engaging in tourism activities has also increased, making tourism an important pillar industry driving consumption growth.At the same time, combined with the lessons learned from nature, people have begun to think about how to co-exist and co-prosper with the earth in order to maintain ecological balance, protect safe and diverse ecosystems and create a safe, healthy and comfortable living space, and are committed to realizing an ecotourism system with sustainable development as its goal.As one of the few countries in the world with more serious natural disasters, China has the characteristics of high frequency, many types of disasters, wide distribution and large losses.Take earthquakes for example, according to records, there were nearly 800 earthquakes with magnitude above 6.0 on the Richter scale in China.The number of deaths from earthquakes is as high as 550,000, accounting for 53% of the global earthquake death toll.The long-term mortality risk of natural disasters is a key threat to disaster resilience (Li et al., 2021).In the face of frequent natural disasters, it has become a key issue for the tourism industry to respond quickly and effectively to major natural disasters and to reduce the casualties and property damage caused by natural disasters.Tourism is a highly sensitive industry and is vulnerable to various types of unconventional emergencies.For example, sudden and large earthquakes often cause road interruption and traffic obstruction.The rescuers must search and rescue the trapped people as quickly as possible under the constraints of limited time, space and resources, and transfer them to the shelter in time to ensure the safety of the victims.In recent years, natural disasters have been occurring worldwide, some of which are unpredictable, devastating and instantaneous.Disaster rescue is an important part of disaster prevention and reduction.In the immediate aftermath of a disaster, people will choose to help each other and provide support to the affected areas.As a source of psychological stress, natural disasters cause casualties and property damage, but they also cause psychological trauma to people in the affected areas and have different degrees of impact on public health.Although natural disasters are inevitable, humans are not helpless in the face of natural disasters and can respond to them through effective policies and measures.Disaster rescue not only helps to restore economic activities and social order, but is also an important step in maintaining the physical and psychological health of the population.Improving natural disaster rescue is of great importance in reducing the number of deaths and disabilities caused by disasters as well as effectively safeguarding public health and life safety.In the face of sudden and major natural disasters in China, when carrying out rescue work for tourists trapped in scenic areas, should we choose to mobilize the efforts of all parties, or choose to carry out rescue work alone?Therefore, this paper focuses on the key factors that contribute to the successful rescue of trapped tourists in natural disasters, and is dedicated to improving response to natural disasters and the operational capacity of rescue teams, ensuring people health.

Natural Disaster
The causes of natural disasters and the extent of their impact are closely related to the way in which the socioeconomic and natural ecosystems in the area where it is located respond (Park et al., 2018).Therefore, an accurate grasp of the relationship between natural disasters and socio-economic development and their interactions requires a proper understanding of the underlying circumstances of natural disasters.Accidents often occur at unexpected times and places, in unexpected ways, and are mostly characterized by suddenness, difficulty in prediction and widespread impact, seriously threatening people's lives and property, the living environment and regional security (Pitman et al., 2019).However, the concept of disaster has not yet been uniformly defined, and there exist various expressions such as event, accident and crisis.
Natural disasters in the broad sense include both gradual disasters, such as environmental disasters (soil erosion, soil desertification, salinization, climate variability and resource depletion), and sudden-onset disasters (Lee et al., 2018).Natural disasters are among the most significant global issues facing humanity today, affecting the sustainable development of society and economy.Thordardottir et al. (2018) define natural disasters as natural phenomena that endanger human survival or damage the human living environment, including meteorological disasters such as floods and droughts, typhoons, hailstorms and dust storms; geological disasters such as volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, landslides and mudslides; marine disasters such as tsunamis, storm surges and sea level rise; and major biological disasters such as forest and grassland fires.Objectively, disasters can be seen as a natural social phenomenon, where the processes are natural in nature and the antecedents (except for a few geological hazards) and consequences are closely linked to the overall social dimension (Fraess-Phillips et al., 2017).In other words, even if earthquakes and floods are widespread, once they are separated from human society, they cannot be called disasters because they are events that are specific to human society and have harmful consequences for human society.
On the other hand, in the process of moving from an agricultural society to a modern industrial society, the complex urban infrastructure, and the ever-expanding population in cities, exacerbate the impacts of climate change and increase the risk of natural hazards.Various human activities have not only accelerated the occurrence of natural disasters, but also directly triggered more and newer man-made disasters.Firstly, anthropogenic natural disasters are natural disasters caused by the action of human social activities on the natural world (Javed & Said, 2022), such as major construction projects that may trigger earthquakes and massive groundwater extraction that may form subsidence; thus they can be classified as natural disasters (Kelman, 2018).Secondly, man-made disasters are classified by the direct causes of disasters, that is, disasters directly caused by human activities.At the same time, some accidental disasters that are caused by natural causes but depend on human actions can also be classified as man-made disasters.For example, the popularity of the automobile has led to an increase in the number of road traffic accidents; the development of the aviation industry has led to an increasing number of air accidents; and the exploitation of offshore oil has increased the potential for maritime disasters (Kondylidis et al., 2018).Generally speaking, the development of production determines the inevitable increase in the number of man-made disasters.The more productive the region, the greater the number of man-made disasters and the more serious their consequences.Of course, in contrast to natural disasters, man-made disasters are caused by humans themselves and can be directly controlled.This feature shows that although disasters are unavoidable, their hazards can be effectively mitigated by adopting various types of corresponding safety management measures afterward.Conversely, if disaster safety is taken lightly or with a bureaucratic attitude of indifference, it can have catastrophic consequences with irreversible effects (Smith et al., 2018).

Emergency Management
The occurrence of natural disasters poses a serious threat to people's property and personal safety, requiring rescuers to search and rescue trapped people and move them to shelters as quickly as possible within the limited time, space and resource constraints, in order to maximize the safety of the affected people.Afshar and Haghani (2012) developed a multi-cycle integrated supply chain optimization model, taking into account the location of temporary logistics facilities, distribution of emergency supplies, vehicle scheduling and routing decisions in response to natural disasters.Rath and Gutjahr (2014) considered the optimization problem of postdisaster emergency material distribution system and developed a multi-objective optimization model for the transit of emergency materials.Ma et al. (2014) established an integrated optimization model for the location of emergency materials distribution center and the routing of distribution vehicles using the chance constrained programing method, which better reflects the actual situation of emergency materials distribution after the earthquake.Xi et al. (2016) proposed a P-median problem considering time constraints and reserve facility construction cost constraints, and designed a variable neighborhood algorithm to solve the problem.
With the progress of economic and social development, especially the improvement of science and technology, people's prevention and understanding of natural disasters have been generally improved, especially in densely populated towns and cities with a high level of economic development, and most people have the awareness of disaster prevention (Chiang et al., 2018).The capacity of the disaster prevention, mitigation and relief system at the grassroots level is one of the challenges facing the modernization of the emergency management system and capacity, optimizing and improving the emergency management system and integrating the disaster mitigation system into modern technological reforms, such as satellite technology, remote sensing technology, modern communications, calculator systems, artificial intelligence and various new disaster information notification equipment.Paulus et al. (2018) indicated that China started late in establishing contingency response mechanisms for emergencies, and the overall mechanism is still in the development stage.In the past, the response to emergencies mainly took the form of establishing temporary commands, which focused on handling emergencies and lacked complete processes such as early warning and aftercare.The temporary command is headed by the executive head of the government and its members are the heads of various ministries and commissions.Since 2007, China has started to promote emergency management at the grass-roots level, and officially implemented the Emergency Response Law of the People's Republic of China in November, which is the first comprehensive basic law to deal with all kinds of emergencies (Klimley et al., 2018).
All levels of government and industries are strengthening the construction of emergency planning systems for public emergencies, and China has developed .1.3 million emergency plans at all levels, covering all types of emergencies, basically forming an emergency management mechanism based on unified leadership, comprehensive coordination, hierarchical responsibility and local management.Tan and Yip (2018) suggested that there are often four periods of major emergencies: latency, formation, outbreak and receding.Therefore, government emergency response management efforts mainly cover the four phases of prevention, preparedness, response and recovery, while China has added the concept of regional scope in dealing with emergency response.Nash et al. (2018) referred to a certain isomorphic and aggregated unit as a region.That is, the existing administrative divisions are taken as established units, such as national, provincial, municipal, county and enterprise levels; it is even comprehensively defined by certain regional units and natural features such as flood and drought stricken areas and earthquake stricken areas; it can also be divided into ethnic inhabited areas according to language and cultural characteristics, such as the Dai and Yan minority areas; and the division of economic regions according to the cohesion of economic activities, such as Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, Hainan Special Economic Zone, etc.Therefore, in the four major stages of overall emergency rescue management, each stage has its own specific objectives and contents.

Research Method
Hosseini and Keshavarz (2017) state that four of the more commonly used methods for identifying critical success factors are regression analysis, factor analysis, Delphi, and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP).The steps of hierarchical analysis are firstly, through a group discussion method, bringing together the opinions of scholars, experts and participants to simplify the intricacies of the problem into a hierarchical assessment system of concise elements, and then combining the results of the experts' brainstorming to calculate the degree of contribution or priority of the constituent elements of each level to the corresponding elements of the previous level.Then, through objective interviews with relevant department heads, objectives and tasks are determined according to management procedures, and key success factors are proposed according to personal actual experience and needs.After analysis, screening and sorting, successful factors are sorted, so that resources can be effectively allocated among key factors Finally, measurement indicators are established based on implementation effectiveness (Garbuzova-Schlifter & Madlener, 2016).Tourist attractions are susceptible to natural disasters and other unpredictable factors, resulting in tourists suffering personal injury or property damage, and tourist facilities being greatly damaged, which brings great harm to the development of the tourism industry, and at the same time brings serious losses to the national economy.The article utilizes the Analytic Hierarchy Process to roughly determine the key success factors for rescuing trapped tourists in scenic spots in the context of natural disasters, and at the same time combines with the Fuzzy Delphi Method to establish a perfect and scientific evaluation index.
Natural disaster rescue is carried out in the context of emergencies and emergency situations, with the aim of protecting lives and mitigating economic losses, contributing to the maintenance of public safety and social order, and restoring production and the normal functioning of society.As the traditional Delphi method suffers from averages, correlation of decision attributes and imprecision of group decisions.Therefore, this study adopted an expert questionnaire and selected both the Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM), which imports fuzzy theory, and the Analytic Hierarchy Process(AHP) as data analysis methods to clearly select key factors for the success of rescuing trapped tourists under natural disasters.Based on this to develop a questionnaire, this can be more scientific and comprehensive research on disaster survivors tourists, better enhance the efficiency of natural disaster relief operations.
The Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM), first introduced in 1985 by Murry et al. who incorporated fuzzy theory into the traditional Delphi method, is a method that uses the values of its corresponding variables to express human semantic meanings due to their varying degrees.For example, in natural human language, the weight of the semantic representation can be considered as a linguistic variable, and its degree can be classified into five categories: very low, low, medium, high and very high, or many other words with different degrees, and then given different values of weights to estimate.Murry et al. proposed the assessment of fuzzy semantic variables to solve the problem of ambiguity in the traditional Delphi method, but did not propose more specific calculations.Therefore subsequent researchers have proposed other solutions, such as the maximum minus minimum method, the fuzzy integral method and the triangular fuzzy number.
The analytic hierarchy process aims to build the complex decision-making system into a hierarchical system after integrating experts' opinions, and expand the system according to the level to clarify the problem, complete the dual evaluation according to the principle of pairwise comparison, and evaluate the importance of the weight of the relevant factors of each scheme.

Assessment Index
The research questionnaire was transmitted by email to experts in the field.From the first expert feedback, the paper compiled statistics on the factors that should be taken into account when rescuing trapped tourists in a natural disaster.The factors were then categorized according to their nature and sent back to the experts asking for their opinion, during which time communication was made by email to reach a final agreement.Finally, the key success factors for rescuing trapped tourists in a natural disaster context were identified as prevention, preparedness, response and recovery.The key factors were then used as the dimensions of the AHP, and the AHP questionnaire was created for each of the categories as its criteria.The following are the criteria for this study as modified by the Delphi method.Prevention: regional emergency planning, safety regulations, development of standards and regulations, publicity and education.
Preparedness: management systems, linkage systems, adequate resources, training and emergency drill.
Response: prompt notification, containment of deterioration, medical services, evacuation and sheltering.
Recovery: clean-up and disinfection, damage payments, review of plans, post-disaster reconstruction.

Research Object
After the Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan, several hard-hit areas were hit by a new round of heavy rainfall, which triggered severe secondary disasters such as floods, mudslides and landslides in quick succession, leaving thousands of tourists stranded in Jiuzhaigou Scenic Area and Huanglong Scenic Area.In this study, local residents of 20 disaster areas were randomly identified as the subjects of questionnaire analysis in the aftermath of the natural disaster in Wenchuan, Sichuan.A total of 300 questionnaires were distributed and 227 valid questionnaires were returned, with an effective rate of about 76%.

Research Analysis
After completing all the tier weights, the selection indicators were assigned according to the relative importance of each tier, indicating the importance of this tier's indicator factors in the overall rating system, and yielding an overall weighting for the selection of factors affecting the successful rescue of trapped tourists from scenic areas under natural disasters, summarized as shown in Table 1.

Research Conclusions
This paper concludes from the empirical analysis that firstly, the most important dimension of the successful rescue of tourists in natural disasters is prevention, with a weight of 0.322, accounting for 32.2% of the overall weight, followed by preparedness (with a weight of 0.263), response (with a weight of 0.227) and recovery (with a weight of 0.188).As can be seen from the degree of attention, in the face of sudden natural disasters, the sooner the scenic spot makes prevention and preparation work, the more effectively it can control the casualties and losses brought by the disasters, so as to ensure the life and property safety of tourists and increase their sense of security.

Policy Implications
This paper makes the following recommendations based on the findings, aiming to provide a theoretical and practical basis for natural disaster rescue.Firstly, when a natural disaster occurs, although scenic area announcements will inform visitors of a disaster in a timely manner, there are still situations where some visitors remain hesitant or even ignore the announcements.At the same time, some visitors choose to delay evacuation to minimize damage in order to move their possessions to the maximum extent possible.In order to avoid these situations, scenic spots can install sirens along the visitors' tour route in advance and adopt a continuous broadcast to alert a wider range of visitors.At the same time, the content of the announcements should be as precise and detailed as possible, informing visitors of the location and circumstances of the disaster briefly, easy-to-understand text, so as to shorten their hesitation time and to improve their chances of being rescued by choosing to evacuate as early as possible.
The scenic area and the government should give full consideration to disaster prevention and resistance.Advance planning reasonable avoidance, may be able to avoid natural disasters caused by human factors, prevent disasters caused by the natural environment, which can maximize the possibility of avoiding the impact of natural disasters on the scenic area and tourists.A sound earthquake mitigation plan should combine the experience of advanced countries with the actual situation in China.At the same time, domestic experts and professors in related fields, relevant units and departments, as well as social groups and organizations, should be invited to participate in the discussion and formulation of the disaster prevention plan.When a consensus is reached, the plan is published on the Internet.Each year, regional governments should publish a white paper on disaster preparedness and response, listing the types of disasters that may be at risk in the area, including earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, fires and epidemics, and proposing targeted disaster prevention and response plans.The government should also conduct sand table exercises for different types of natural disasters to ensure that the public has a clear understanding of what to expect in the event of each type of natural disaster.
Secondly, natural areas need to ensure that disaster preparedness and response plans are standardized.A clear and accurate road-map for disaster preparedness and evacuation should be created, taking into account the routes and internal conditions of the area and the disaster preparedness and response plan issued by the government.The area should regularly test the communication system and rationalize its human resources and clarify the division of responsibilities.At the same time, staff should receive systematic training and work with the mass media to actively promote disaster prevention and relief.This will ensure that when an emergency occurs, the staff in the area will be able to carry out their respective roles and guide visitors through the evacuation process in an orderly manner.
Finally, the government's disaster prevention and relief plan should not only take into account the advice of experts and scholars, but also listen to the views of the public as appropriate.The views of the community can make up for the neglect of the relevant government units, especially in the prevention of natural disasters, which is an important factor in the successful rescue of tourists after a disaster occurs, and can safeguard the lives and properties of tourists.In preparing for, responding to and recovering from disasters, expert opinions should focus mainly on improving management systems, emergency notification and contingency planning.This can effectively avoid negativity and inertia on the part of the relevant government departments and assume the responsibility of monitoring the government.In practice, however, the government's disaster prevention and relief plan does not establish a channel for public participation.Therefore, the government should pay more attention to establishing channels for academics, experts, organizations and the mass media to participate in the development of disaster prevention and relief plans.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Table 1 .
Weighting of Factors Influencing Successful Rescue of Tourists in Natural Disasters.