Greening through Tourism

Mingying Zhu, Bo Chen, Zhiren Hu and Wei Du

No 360758, 2025 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2025, Denver, CO from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: This paper investigates whether productivity growth in the service sector can improve environmental quality. Using the expansion of China's national 5A-level tourist attraction list as a natural experiment, we find that when a city obtains its first nationally recognized "best" tourist attraction, the PM2.5 concentration declines by about 5.1% over the following decade. The improvement in air quality is driven by structural transformation resulting from the reallocation of capital and labor toward the service sector, rather than strengthened environmental regulations. The air quality improvement generated an additional USD 3.1 billion in revenue for China's tourism sector over the decade.

Keywords: Community/Rural/Urban; Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 68
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea25:360758

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.360758

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