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With the rapid development of the tourism industry, the water resource consumption in tourism has largely increased and gets more complicated, making water resource management in tourism more difficult. To achieve sustainable water utilization in tourism, water resource management has to take full account of the local natural, social, and industrial conditions, both satisfying the demands of water resource protection and tourism development. To analyze this coupling relationship, an integrated index system comprised of 15 indices is designed, and a coupling degree model between tourism-related water resource management and local conditions is introduced. The result revealed that tourism-related water resource management is generally congruent with the local conditions in China, and provinces at the very high/low coupling stage presented four clusters. A discussion combining the change of water policies and the water use efficiency of hotels in Beijing revealed that water-saving policies are proven to be necessary for the tourism development. Furthermore, a discussion of the four clusters revealed the advanced experience and deficiency of water policies in substantial tourism areas. The results could provide references for the improvement of water policies in the tourism industry in China. Highlights An index system and a coupling degree model are introduced to analyze tourism-related water management and local conditions in China.; Water management in tourism is generally congruent with the local conditions in China, and their coupling relationship presented a cluster pattern.; Water-saving priority is necessary for tourism in China.; The provinces on the east coast should take the strictest water management in tourism.;

It is crucial to consider regional heterogeneity while analyzing drivers of changes in sectoral water use for developing differentiated and effective demand-regulation strategies in China. By using the logarithmic mean Divisia index method, this study compares dynamic influences of intensity, structure and scale factors on changes in productive and domestic water use during 2003–2017 between Tianjin (a socio-economic developed region) and Hebei (less-developed). The results show that the scale effect stimulated the growth of productive water use in both regions, while structure and intensity effects restrained such growth. The three effects all stimulated the growth of domestic water use in most years in both regions. In both regions, the largest contributor to changes in productive and domestic water use was the scale and intensity effect, respectively. However, in the two regions, the synergies of three effects resulted in different change trends of productive water use, and cumulative contributions of sub-sectors to the intensity, structure and scale effects were not exactly the same. Tianjin and Hebei need to keep on adjusting industrial structure and lowering water-use intensity to control future growth of productive water use and take strict measures to tackle the increasing trend of domestic water use but should have different policy implementation focuses. Highlights The drivers of water-use changes of regions at different socio-economic development stages were compared.; The forces of driving-factors of productive and domestic water use changed with time.; The root cause of changes in productive and domestic water use was not exactly the same in the two regions.; The results are helpful for formulating differentiated water-demand management policies.;