Eco-efficiency and its determinants at a tourism destination: A case study of Huangshan National Park, China

Hongsong Peng, Jinhe Zhang, Lin Lu, Guorong Tang, Bingjin Yan, Xiao Xiao and Ya Han

Tourism Management, 2017, vol. 60, issue C, 201-211

Abstract: This study creates a comprehensive evaluation index system, including undesirable outputs and a Slacks-Based Measure-Data Envelopment Analysis model, to analyse the characteristics and evolution of eco-efficiency at an individual tourism destination. This study also empirically identifies the determinants of eco-efficiency. Huangshan National Park, one of the most iconic and highly visited national parks in China, was chosen as the study site. The study results indicate that eco-efficiency has improved continuously. Pure technical efficiency is higher than scale efficiency, while eco-efficiency is more relevant to scale efficiency than to pure technical efficiency. The evolution of eco-efficiency undergoes four stages: an initial inefficient stage, a rapid growth stage, a mature efficient stage and a downside risk stage. Moreover, tourism development, industrial structure and technical level have significantly positive impacts on eco-efficiency, but investment level displays the opposite trend. Environmental regulation emphasizing waste control does not effectively promote eco-efficiency. Finally, theoretical and practical contributions of the findings are discussed in the context of eco-efficiency at a tourism destination. For instance, an eco-efficiency analysis of a destination should treat the tourism destination as a macro-scale system with complex evolutionary rules and should combine this perspective with theory, such as the tourist area cycle of evolution proposed by Butler in 1980.

Keywords: Tourism eco-efficiency; Time series SBM-DEA model; Tobit regression analysis; Huangshan National Park; Tourism destination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:touman:v:60:y:2017:i:c:p:201-211

DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2016.12.005

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