Abstract
Green and low-carbon development has become a compelling trend of our time. To formulate policies for development and also reduction of carbon emissions, quantifying the trend of tourism in green sustainable development is an essential issue for China, which is undergoing an economic transformation. This study first measured China’s domestic tourism carbon emissions through a bottom-up approach and then used the robust Granger causality test on annual data from 1993 to 2019 to investigate the relationships among China’s domestic tourism revenue, carbon emissions, and economic growth. The empirical results show that: (1) Carbon emissions of the domestic tourism industry are growing steadily, and the carbon emissions of the transportation industry determine the trend of the total carbon emissions of the domestic tourism industry, (2) long-term equilibrium relationships exist among China’s domestic tourism, carbon emissions, and economic growth, and (3) bidirectional causal relationships among economic growth, carbon emissions, and domestic tourism revenue have been detected with the robust Granger causality test, and the time-varying causal relationships may change markedly in these times of significant events and policy changes. Therefore, policymakers should coordinate the relationships among domestic tourism revenue, carbon emissions, and economic growth, in an effort to promote the development of sustainable tourism in China.
Highlights
As a comprehensive industry in the national economy, tourism has the role of integrating with the development of other economic sectors and improving the structure of the national economy
= 0 holds, the traditional Granger causality test believes that carbon emissions do not Granger-cause domestic tourism revenue
The results show that there was no Granger causality between domestic tourism revenue and carbon emissions, whereas economic growth was the Granger-cause of domestic tourism revenue—meaning that the economy-driven tourism growth hypothesis (EDTGH) holds in China
Summary
As a comprehensive industry in the national economy, tourism has the role of integrating with the development of other economic sectors and improving the structure of the national economy. China’s tourism industry has developed rapidly since the 1978 launch of the nation’s reform and opening-up. The nation’s domestic tourism market is in a “central position” among the three major tourism markets and plays a pivotal role in economic development (Brida et al, 2020). China’s total tourism revenue in 1997 was 0.34 trillion Yuan, and in 2019 it reached 6.63 trillion Yuan, 19.5 times that of 1997. Domestic tourism revenue in 1997 was 0.24 trillion Yuan, and in 2019, it reached 5.73 trillion Yuan, 23.88 times that of 1997. The number of direct employments related to tourism in 2019 was 28.25 million, while the number of direct and indirect employments related to tourism was 79.87 million, accounting for 10.31% of the total employed population in China
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