Abstract
Carbon emissions play an important role in sustainable tourism development at heritage sites. The study takes the Wulingyuan Scenic and Historic Interest Area (WSHIA) as an example, and primary and secondary data sources are used to measure and estimate the carbon emissions of tourist attractions from 1979 to 2014. The temporal and spatial evolution of carbon emissions and their influencing factors for tourist attractions at heritage tourist destinations are analyzed. The results show that there are great differences in carbon emissions per visitor across the different types of tourism attractions at the heritage tourist destination, and there are significant monthly and interannual differences in the carbon emissions of the tourism attractions in the WSHIA. The main influencing factors include tourism seasonality, the rapid growth of China’s tourism market, and the rising popularity of heritage tourism. The spatial evolution of carbon emissions of the tourist attractions can be divided into three stages, and its main influencing factors include functional zoning and environmental regulation at the heritage sites and diversified evolution of the heritage tourist attractions. The findings of this study could enrich theories of low-carbon tourism and provide the low-carbon development measures of sustainable tourism in heritage tourist destinations for policymakers.
Highlights
Tourism has been recognized as a significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions source on a global scale by United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)-UNEP-WMO [1] and Gössling [2]
It can be concluded that carbon emissions from tourist attractions and activities are very important and the corresponding data is lacking in the study of sustainable tourism, so this paper tries to fill this gap through calculating and analyzing carbon emissions of tourist attractions and activities
The results show there are great differences in carbon emissions per visitor across the different types of tourism attractions at the heritage tourist destination
Summary
Tourism has been recognized as a significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions source on a global scale by UNWTO-UNEP-WMO [1] and Gössling [2]. A lot of studies have focused on accounting for the carbon emissions of different tourism sectors, such as tourism transportation [3,17,18,19,20], tourism accommodation [21,22,23,24,25], tourist attractions and activities [25,26,27,28] and others. Previous findings on energy and CO2 emissions in the tourism industry mainly focus on three sectors: transportation, accommodation, and activities [17,18]. Many studies have indicated that transportation and accommodation account for a large portion of the energy consumption and CO2 emissions in the tourism industry [1,9]. There are few studies on energy consumption and carbon emissions of tourist attractions and activities when compared to tourism transportation and accommodation. It can be concluded that carbon emissions from tourist attractions and activities are very important and the corresponding data is lacking in the study of sustainable tourism, so this paper tries to fill this gap through calculating and analyzing carbon emissions of tourist attractions and activities
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