Do tourism clusters contribute to low-carbon destinations? The spillover effect of tourism agglomerations on urban residential CO2 emissions

Qiang Zhou*, Shen Qu, Wanrong Hou

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    17 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    A burgeoning literature has investigated the relationship between tourism and regional CO2 emissions. However, the results are equivocal. Some scholars find that tourism induces more emissions, while others find that tourism benefits emission mitigation. Previous research suffers three deficiencies: (1) the CO2 emissions induced by tourism beyond the tourism sectors are neglected; (2) the role of tourism agglomerations in sustainable destination development is underrated; (3) the tripartite mechanism of tourism agglomerations, household income, and urban direct residential CO2 emissions (DRCEs) remains to be determined. Based on the theories of complex adaptive system and an empirical study of 30 provinces in China, we examine the relationship between the tripartite roles via multiple spatial econometric models. The results disclose that tourism agglomerations have dual effects on urban DRCEs and an inverted U-shaped effect on household income. The growth of tourism agglomerations has generally promoted urban DRCEs in many provinces of mainland China during the last fourteen years because its indirect effect (positive) outweighs the direct effect (negative). However, tourism agglomerations are feasible for low-carbon destinations once the emission-income decoupling happens. This study contributes to low-carbon destination management by presenting a more holistic image of the social-economic-environmental impacts of tourism agglomerations.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number117160
    JournalJournal of Environmental Management
    Volume330
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 15 Mar 2023

    Keywords

    • Complex adaptive system
    • Low-carbon destination management
    • Residential carbon emissions
    • Spatial econometric model
    • Tourism agglomeration

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Do tourism clusters contribute to low-carbon destinations? The spillover effect of tourism agglomerations on urban residential CO2 emissions'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this