In the context of the strategy of harmonious coexistence between human beings and nature, the ecological construction in tourism cities is an important engine to promote the sustainable improvement of residents' well-being. The focus is on how to promote the transformation of the value of ecological products in tourism cities, promote the benign interaction between ecological construction and economic development, and continuously improve the residents' well-being, which is also the current hotspot and difficulty of "seeking happiness for the people". At the outset, the paper clarified the realization mechanism of the ecological construction in tourism cities to enhance residents' well-being, and launched an in-depth study with a typical well-known tourism city Zhangjiajie City. The autoregressive moving average(ARMA) modeling was used to analyze the relationship between ecological construction in tourism cities and residents' well-being, and the structural equation modeling was applied to explicit the path and intensity of ecological construction in tourism cities on residents' well-being. It found that:(1) The level of ecological construction in Zhangjiajie City from 1998 to 2021 showed a fluctuating upward trend, while the level of residents' well-being roughly showed a "spoon shape" development trend of first decreasing and then increasing. (2) The relationship analysis through the modeling confirmed that the active acceleration of ecological construction in Zhangjiajie City was conducive to a significant increase in the residents' well-being. Pathways of action using structural equation modeling to explore included industrial upgrading and urbanization construction, which were common to cities in general, as well as tourism development and employment growth, which could highlight the characteristics of tourism cities. (3) Based on the aforementioned theoretical explanation and empirical analysis, combining the ecological advantages of tourism cities, especially highlighting the mutual promotion and joint development with the tourism industry, the optimization strategy for the path of ecological construction in tourism cities to enhance the residents' well-being was proposed from the three aspects of urbanization construction, industrial upgrading and employment growth. The first was to enhance the quality of urbanization and improve the benefit sharing mechanism. The second was to stimulate the green innovation of enterprises and promote industrial transformation and upgrading. The third was to promote the integration of culture and tourism and guarantee the quality of tourism employment. As a result, this study was conducive to strengthening the practical guidance of ecological civilization construction strategy, and also provided a scientific basis for tourism cities to give full play to their ecological advantages to improve residents' well-being.