Assessing the Environmental Impact and Cost of the Tourism-Induced CO 2, NO x, SO x Emission in China

Yalan Shi and Miaojing Yu
Additional contact information
Yalan Shi: College of Tourism, Huaqiao University, Quanzhou 362021, China
Miaojing Yu: College of Tourism, Huaqiao University, Quanzhou 362021, China

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 2, 1-19

Abstract: Tourism, as one economic activity, results in a full range of environmental impacts globally as well as in China. However, the evaluation of environmental impacts is insufficient because of the strong correlation effect between tourism and other industries. This study attempted to assess the environmental impact and cost of the tourism-induced pollutant emissions (in a broad sense) at the national scale through constructing the environmental-economic input-output model. Our results suggested that the China’s total emission of CO 2 , NO x , SO x related to tourism industry increased from 42 × 10 6 t, 162 kt, 345 kt in 1995 to 157 × 10 6 t, 527 kt, 854 kt in 2009. The indirect CO 2 , NO x , and SO x emissions of tourism and related industries were nearly 6.8–11 times of their direct emission in travel agency. Most of these indirect emissions (73% of CO 2 in 2009, 54% of NO x in 1995, 62% of SO x in 2009) are derived from the energy plants and industrial sectors. The sustainable tourism should largely depend on the realization of sustainable mobility and transportation, through the low-emission behavior and energy-saving technology. The emission reduction cost of tourism industry in China was 30,170 and 172,812 million CNY in 1995 and 2009, accounting for nearly 14% of the total tourism revenue.

Keywords: tourism industry; environmental impact; environmental-economic input-output model; shadow price; environmental cost; CO 2 emission; NO x emission; SO x emission; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/2/604/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/2/604/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:2:p:604-:d:477901

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().