A Quantitative analysis of quality of life and co2 emission in the context of sustainable tourism development in China

Abstract

Nowadays, there are increasing concerns over global warming and climate change around the world. Under this circumstance, we ought to attach great importance to protecting the environment where we live while promoting economic development. Tourism, as an essential part of developing the economy of China, affects the environment and natural resources dramatically in the course of creating economic benefits. Thus, tourism should be expanded with due consideration of the overall sustainable development with a balance in both economic benefit and environmental benefit. In such a context, the purpose of this thesis is to investigate how to achieve sustainable growth in China's tourism industry from perspectives of both “positive effects” and “negative effects”. First and foremost, this thesis selects one of the most popular beneficial influences of tourism, that is, the quality of life (QoL) from a “positive effects” research perspective, to analyze the linkage between tourism demand (TD) and residents’ QoL. It employs data from the top three tourism source markets in terms of the volume of foreign visitors traveling around China for analysis by the Copula-based Seemingly Unrelated Regressions (SUR) model. Then, this thesis chooses tourism-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to represent the “negative effects” of tourism. To see how far the negative effects can be possibly lessened, this thesis uses data from 30 provinces for analysis by the Two-tier Stochastic Frontier (TSF) model to study how much potential space that both parties -tourism companies and local governments - can use to reduce the emission of tourism-related CO2. Eventually, this thesis proposes using an innovative method called the Multi-tier Stochastic Frontier (MSF) model to combine the “positive effects” with “negative effects”, in an attempt to figure out how to balance the economic benefits and the environmental pollution from tourism development in China. The main conclusions of this thesis are divided into three parts. Firstly, the TD investigation reveals that not all TD from various source countries positively affected residents' QoL. Furthermore, our results from this investigation confirm that the Copula-based SUR model is more efficient than the traditional SUR model. Secondly, the empirical results of the TSF model indicate that the actual tourism CO2 exceeds the emission limit compared with the expected emissions under a perfect information situation. As for the tourism CO2 difference between the idealized state and the actual state, compared to local governments, the surplus of tourism CO2 available saving space extracted by tourism companies is much bigger. Besides, the empirical results are significantly different across provinces, years, and characteristics. Finally, the empirical results of the MSF model demonstrate that without the intervention of the local governments, the tourism-related CO2 emissions will not be limited and the TD will decrease; if a target is set only for promoting tourism development, the tourism-related CO2 emissions will rise as tourism grows. To achieve the balance between the TD and the emissions of tourism-related CO2, government intervention is a solution because the tourism-related CO2 emissions will likely be controlled within a reasonable range while promoting tourism development. As local governments can play an essential role in not only promoting the development of tourism but also reducing the CO2 emissions from tourism, their issuance of adequate policies to enhance tourism energy efficiency is the most significant way to balance the relationship between tourism blooming and environmental protection. To summarize based on the empirical results, this thesis proposes policy recommendations for tourism sustainable development in China from three aspects: the impacts of different TD on Chinese citizens’ QoL, the role of tourism companies and governments in emission reduction of tourism-related CO2 under the imperfect information situation, and the role of local governments in determining the strategies for the coordinated development between the tourism industry and environmental protection.