You gain when you give: Constructing a sustainable development model for world heritage sites

The importance of preserving world heritage sites (WHS) has been recognized worldwide. WHS are still damaged in many developing countries, who insist that preserving lead to poor economic development. There is a dispute between ecological protection and economic growth. Scholars proposed sustainable development to resolve the dispute. However, the result of sustainable development could not be well evaluated by previous studies. The relationship between ecological protection and economic growth was still unknown. The research object of this study is to construct a two-stage model of sustainable development to deal with the dilemma between ecological and economic goals. The relationship between ecological protection and economic development will be verified. It is found that heritage sites could be protected by proper activities that contribute to economic development. Strict ecological protection brings a sound ecological environment, which, in turn, creates a positive image important for attracting arrivals. The innovation of this study is to propose a two-stage network DEA method with second order cone programming technique to examine the sustainable development. A performance improvement strategy map would be provided to promote the sustainable performance for WHS in different countries.