Empirical research on construction of a measurement framework for tourism carbon emission in China

Tourism-Related CO2 Emission and Its Decoupling Effects in China: A Spatiotemporal Perspective

“…Compared with other industries, such as metal products manufacturing, chemical industry, power supply, and transportation industries, the tourism industry has less energy consumption and pollution emissions. The direct CO 2 emissions and ecological multipliers from the tourism industry ranked the sixteenth and eleventh in the 23 industrial sectors in 2007 in China, respectively [2,3]. However, this does not mean that the tourism industry is a "zero emission" or "green" industry.…”

Accounting for carbon emissions associated with tourism-related consumption

“…These results challenge the idea that China’ tourism is ‘clean and green’ and a ‘low-carbon sector’. Studies that emphasize tourism-related carbon emissions for other regions have reported similar results, including Dwyer et al (2010) for Australia, Sun (2016) for Taiwan, Patterson et al (2004) for New Zealand and Yuan (2013) and Zhong et al (2014) for China. Therefore, the vigorous development of tourism while ignoring tourism-related CO 2 emissions will lead to more carbon emissions overall.…”

“…In China, based on IO analysis, Yuan (2013) calculated China’s indirect tourism-related carbon footprint to be 44.41 million tons in 2007. Based on the life cycle assessment theory, Zhong et al (2014) calculated that in China in 2007, the direct carbon emissions of the tourism industry accounted for 73.56 million tons, and the indirect carbon emissions of the tourism industry were 96.23 million tons. Thus, studies can provide considerably different results even for the same year.…”

Progress and Prospects for Tourism Footprint Research

“…Combining the two methods can effectively provide more comprehensive and accurate results, as observed in tourism footprint calculations that have been performed in New Zealand [18], Australia [20] and Switzerland [52] (Table 1). In addition, Cadarso et al [22], Zhong et al [25], and Zhou et al [58] combined IO analysis with an LCA to build the IO-LCA joint model, which reduces truncation errors and superpositions and simplifies the calculation process. Overall, comprehensive methods will make tourism footprint results more dependable and less contestable.…”

“…Against this background, TCF analysis focuses on environmental issues caused by large-scale tourism, particularly its energy consumption and CO 2 emissions (defined as the amount of CO 2-eq emissions caused directly and indirectly by tourism activity), which have been widely researched at various scales, such as analyses for the countries of New Zealand [18], Sweden [19], Australia [20], Spain [21,22], Iceland [23], and China [24][25][26]; the regions of Taiwan [27][28][29], Wales [30], and Poole [31]; and even the scenic locations of the Penghu Islands [32] and Huangshan National Park [33]. TCF analysis excels at assessing the impact of tourism greenhouse gas emissions on climate change and identifying the contribution of tourism carbon emissions to climate change at the global scale, which has become a key research field.…”