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Characteristics, decoupling effect, and driving factors of regional tourism’s carbon emissions in China

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A Correction to this article was published on 23 February 2022

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Abstract

By revealing the temporal and spatial differentiation of China’s regional tourism carbon emissions and its decoupling relationship with tourism economic growth and identifying the key factors affecting tourism carbon emissions, this paper is expected to provide a reference for the formulation and implementation of China’s regional tourism industry emission reduction policies and measures. Using the tourism’s carbon emission data of 30 provinces (cities) in China from 2007 to 2019, we have established a logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) model to identify the main driving factors of carbon emissions related to tourism and a Tapio decoupling model to analyze the decoupling relationship between tourism’s carbon emissions and tourism-driven economic growth. Our analysis suggests that China’s regional tourism’s carbon emissions are growing significantly with marked differences across its regions. Although there are observed fluctuations in the decoupling relationship between regional tourism’s carbon emissions and tourism-driven economic growth in China, the data exhibit a primary characteristic of weak decoupling. Nonetheless, the degree of decoupling is rising to various extents across regions. Three of the five driving factors investigated are also found to affect emissions. Both tourism scale and tourism consumption lead to the growth of tourism’s carbon emissions, while energy intensity has a significant effect on reducing emissions. These effects differ across regions.

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Original data are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express sincere gratitude to anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments to improve the quality of the manuscript.

Funding

This research was funded by National Social Science Foundation of China, grant number 19CJY040; Social science key research base project of Jiangxi province of 2021, grant number 21SKJD07.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center of Resource and Environmental Economics, East China University of Technology, 330013, Nanchang, China

    Guobao Xiong, Junhong Deng & Baogen Ding

  2. Resource and Environmental Strategic Soft Science Research Base of Jiangxi Province, 330013, Nanchang, China

    Guobao Xiong

Authors
  1. Guobao Xiong
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  2. Junhong Deng
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  3. Baogen Ding
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Contributions

All the authors contributed to the study conception and design. Data analysis and writing were carried out by Junhong Deng. The reviewing, editing, and supervision were carried out by Guobao Xiong. Theory and method guidance were carried out by Baogen Ding.

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Correspondence to Junhong Deng.

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The original online version of this article was revised: In Figure 3c, the label should be 2015~2019.

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Xiong, G., Deng, J. & Ding, B. Characteristics, decoupling effect, and driving factors of regional tourism’s carbon emissions in China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 47082–47093 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19054-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19054-9

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