Exploring the Ecological Performance of China's Tourism Industry: A Three-Stage Undesirable SBM-DEA Approach with Carbon Footprint

Research on the coupling and coordinated development of Guangxi's tourism industry, new urbanization and environmental health system in the post-epidemic era

As one of China's sunrise industries, tourism has always been the engine to promote the development of the national economy, and in 2018, the annual income of China's tourism industry exceeded 5 trillion yuan unprecedentedly. In recent years, the traditional extensive production mode has inevitably brought about problems such as environmental pollution and public health threats, while helping the development of new urbanization, thus triggering a series of challenges in the environmental health system. The tourism industry, new urbanization, and environmental health system three cooperate and promote each other, the coordinated development between them for economic growth, new urbanization development, environmental protection, and public health play a vital role, in the post-epidemic era is a special period of historical opportunities, the public's focus from the original sacrifice of environmental health in exchange for economic growth model began to green, low-carbon sustainable development mode, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region as a tourism resource endowment rich region, It is of positive significance to explore the coupling degree and coordination between the tourism industry, new urbanization and environmental health system, and put forward targeted practical enlightenment, which is of positive significance for promoting the sustainable development of tourism industry. Taking Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region as a case study, this paper constructs three comprehensive evaluation index systems of the tourism industry, new urbanization and environmental health system, and analyzes and compares the weights of various indicators in the three fields of tourism economy, new urbanization and environmental health system in Guangxi by using the entropy weight TOPSIS method. The coupling coordination model was used to measure the coupling degree and coordination degree of the tourism industry, new urbanization and environmental health system construction in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region from 2009 to 2021. The empirical results show that the weights of various indicators change with the development of the social economy. The comprehensive efficacy index of Guangxi's tourism industry has increased year by year for 11 consecutive years; At the end of the evaluation period, after the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the evaluation index of the tourism industry, new urbanization and environmental health system all showed a downward trend to varying degrees. Before the pandemic, the coupling coordination type of the three subsystems generally experienced a transformation of "moderate dissonance-reluctant coordination-primary coordination-intermediate coordination," but the overall development level was still poor. After the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the coupling and coordination between the three has been reduced to a state of poor coordination. Because of the above research conclusions, this study proposes to make full use of the important time node of the post-epidemic era and proposes to actively promote the development of the tourism industry, promote the upgrading of the industrial structure, use digital empowerment of the economic form, optimize the environmental health system and other targeted countermeasures to keep the coupling degree and coordination between the three within a reasonable range. This ensures the sustainable development of social systems in the region. This study has made some contributions to the development of high-quality tourism and a healthy environment. First of all, it enriches the content of the environmental health system. This study takes the ecological environment and atmospheric environment in the environmental health system as the entry point and adds the index content of the environmental health evaluation system, which provides a certain supplement for the relevant research on the environmental health system strength. Secondly, the relationship between the tourism industry, new urbanization and environmental health is analyzed and into a unified theoretical framework. This study takes the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, which is rich in tourism resources, as a case study site, and innovatively explores the coupling and coordination relationship among the tourism industry, new urbanization and environmental health system in the case site. Finally, it provides targeted countermeasures for the sustainable development path of the three systems of tourism industry, new urbanization and environmental health in the case site in the future. It is of positive practical significance to compare the coupling and coordination degree between the three, realize the coordinated, orderly, and healthy development of the three in the region, and provide operational suggestions for the upgrading of the tourism industry structure, the benign development of new urbanization, and the formulation of environmental health system policies.

Does tourism development contribute to the green water-use efficiency of the Yellow River Basin in China?

The coordination between economic development as well as water resources conservation in ecologically fragile areas is the basis for achieving sustainable development in developing countries. Nonetheless, the existing literature pays little attention to such an issue. The purpose of this quantitative study is to explore the causal relationship between tourism development and green water-use efficiency in the Yellow River Basin (YRB) of China. The findings are as follows: (1) Tourism development can significantly enhance the green water-use efficiency in the YRB; For every 1% increase in tourism revenue, the green water-use efficiency will increase by 4.38%. (2) Tourism affects the green water-use efficiency by increasing the intensity of water pollution and decreasing the intensity of water use; For every 1% increase in tourism revenue, the green water-use efficiency will decrease by 0.2% and increase by 0.9% respectively by increasing the intensity of water pollution and decreasing the intensity of water use. (3) Strengthening environmental regulation and improving service facilities will further enhance the positive impact of tourism development; An increase of one standard deviation in the intensity of environmental regulation or one standard deviation in the level of service facilities will increase the impact of tourism on green water-use efficiency by 1.1% or 1.7%, respectively. The aforementioned findings provide enlightenment for effectively promoting the coordination between economic development and water resources protection in ecologically fragile areas of developing countries.