Spatial dynamics and influencing factors of carbon rebound effect in tourism transport: Evidence from the Yangtze-river delta urban agglomeration

Abstract

Economic efficiency gains in tourism are considered a crucial approach to reducing carbon emissions in the tourism sector, especially in tourism transport. However, as a significant source of carbon emissions from tourism activities, the total carbon emissions from tourism transport have not decreased proportionally to the reduction in the intensity, despite China's overall improvement in the tourism economic efficiency. This phenomenon is commonly known as the “rebound effect”, which means that although technological progress can achieve emission reductions by efficiency improvement, but it can also indirectly stimulate socio-economic growth and creates new energy demands, results in expected emission reductions being offset by the additional economic growth effect. Based on the multi-source data structure, this paper takes Yangtze-river delta urban agglomeration as an example, quantitatively evaluated the carbon rebound effect of tourism transport through the rebound effect measurement model; simulated the spatiotemporal dynamics evolution pattern of the carbon rebound effect in tourism transport through the spatial kernel density; extracted and identified the dominant factors of carbon rebound effect in tourism transport by the geographic detector. The conclusions summarized as follow: (1) The overall carbon emissions from tourism transport in the agglomeration primarily exhibit a weak rebound effect. (2) The carbon rebound effect is significantly influenced by spatiotemporal factors, which impact its development trend and interaction relations. (3) The level of tourism consumption exerts the greatest influence on the carbon rebound effect of tourism transport, while environmental regulation intensity is commonly employed as a measure to address the rebound effect. This paper aims to enhance the diversity of research on carbon emissions in tourism transport while addressing the existing limitations in spatial-temporal extension. The objective is to restrain the spread of the carbon rebound effect at the regional level, thereby providing a novel decision-making reference for the sustainable development of regional tourism.