Effect of Tourism Development on Energy Consumption, CO₂ and Economic Growth in China

Abstract

This study examines the effect of tourism development on energy consumption, CO2 and economic growth in China over the period from 1981 to 2010. An extension of ARIMA model was performed to investigate the relationship between variables. Two principle test results emerge from this study. First, increases on visitors may largely give rise to GDP. On the other hand, increase on tourism receipts may result in greater energy consumption and CO2 emission to some extent as compared to number of visitors. However, the amount of effects from either tourism receipts or number of visitors to energy consumption and CO2 emission are limited. From an energy conservation and economic growth point of view, the results support the hypothesis of tourism-led economic growth in the China economy with relatively limited increase of energy consumption and CO2 emission.

Tourism, environment and energy: an analysis for China

“…Similar results are reached by Tiwari, Ozturk, and Aruna (2013) for OECD countries; and Sekrafi and Sghaier (2018) in Tunisia. Kuo, Liu, and Lai (2012) conclude that tourism receipts might increase energy consumption and CO 2 emissions in China. In contrast to this, Lee and Brahmasrene (2013) find that tourism may decrease CO 2 emissions for a panel of European Union countries, and similar results are found by Katircioglu (2014) with regard to Singapore.…”

The relationship of economic variables and final energy consumption: multiple linear regression evidence

“…The GDP, population and tourism that represent economic variables are chosen as input variables while final energy consumption as output variable. The choices of these variables are in accordance with several previous studies [4], [5]. This study employs secondary data collected from World Bank [10],[11], Tourism Malaysia [12], Department of Statistics [13] and Energy Commission [1] websites.…”

“…The result shows that ANN is a better way in forecasting. In a time series analysis, Kuo et al, [4] analysed the relationship between tourism development, economic growth, CO2 emission and energy consumption using Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average Model (ARIMA). The result indicates that an increase of tourist arrival would raise the energy consumption and emission of CO2, while the increase of visitors results in the rise of GDP.…”

“…It is believed that there are many variables contribute to the final energy consumption. Zhou et al, [3] and Kuo et al, [4] suggested the variables that can be linked to final energy consumption are manufacturing, residential household, agriculture, industrial, commercial, construction, services, and transportation, just to name a few. Furthermore, Zhou et al, [3] mentioned the macroscopic variables such as GDP, population and level of urbanization may influence final energy consumption.…”

“…Furthermore, Zhou et al, [3] mentioned the macroscopic variables such as GDP, population and level of urbanization may influence final energy consumption. In searching for other variables, Kou et al, [4] also included numbers of tourist arrivals as another variable. Some related researches investigate a single variable that may influence final energy consumption.…”