Measurement Of Relationship And Eco-efficiency Between Tourism Economic Growth And Resource-environmental Pressure In Huangshan Scenic Area

Tourism is a way of life for modern people.Tourism makes the better life,the more splendid culture,the more beautiful mountains and rivers,and the more harmonious society.Nowadays,the tourism industry has been established as the strategic pillar industry and modern service industry in China.Tourism destination is the material carrier and spatial support of tourism development,it is a complex and open regional system which is formed and developed by the emergence,distribution,agglomeration,and diffusion of tourist flow.It is also a special complex ecosystem made up of four sub-systems of "natural-economy-social culture-tourism".On one hand,the complex ecosystem mainly includes the stakeholders of the country,region,enterprise,tourist,and resident.There are differences in the interests of protecting the environment and developing the tourism industry.The country needs ecology,the region needs development,the enterprises needs benefits,the tourists need the landscapes,and residents needs to increase income.So,the differences between the objectives of the stakeholders are very prominent and result in conflicts between tourism development and environmental protection,which influence the sustainable development of tourism destination.It is the realistic problem of inclusive and sustainable development of tourism destination.On the other hand,tourism has traditionally been regarded as the sunrise industry,green industry and smokeless industry.However,tourism development not only promotes social progress and economic growth in tourism destination,but also leads to massive consumption of water,energy,food and beverage biomass,the occupation of land,capital,labor,and the discharge of solid waste,sewage,waste gas,etc.These produce great pressure on resource support systems and environmental adoption systems.Therefore,how to scientifically examine the role of regional economy and resource-environmental impact of tourism development,analysis of the relationship between tourism economic growth and resource-environmental pressure,assess the status of the sustainability of tourism destination,and explore alternative paths to promote the sustainability of tourism destination has become a major realistic and theoretical problem that needs to be solved urgently in the study of sustainable development of tourism destination.In this study,the relationship between tourism economic growth and resource-environmental pressure is taken as the breakthrough point.The core contents of the study are the theoretical foundation,method improvement,model construction,evaluation system,status identification,evolution characteristics,causality test,efficiency evaluation and optimization of the relationship between tourism economic growth and resource-environmental pressure.The case of present study is Huangshan Scenic Area,located in Anhui,Huangshan City,China.Using theory of human-land relationship,sustainable development theory,ecological footprint theory,decoupling theory,ecoefficiency theory,SBM-DEA,Tobit regression analysis,unit root test,co-integration test,and Granger causality test.The decoupling relationship,its degree and evolution law,and the causality relationship between tourism economic growth,resource consumption,and environmental pollution factors are analyzed.The present study also identifies the key resources-environmental factors that restrict tourism economic growth,reveals the basic characteristic,evolution and its influence factors of eco-efficiency of tourism.The study is composed of eight chapters and divided into the following four parts.The first part(chapter one and two)is the introduction and literature review,answering the reason why to study this issue on the relationship between tourism economic growth and resourceenvironmental pressure.And,chapter one is the introduction,introduces the origin and significance of this study.Chapter two is the literature review regarding tourism economic effects tourism environmental effects,tourism economic growth,and resource-environmental pressure.The first part reviews the relevant research literature,and its knowledge system.On the basis of existing research gaps,and lay the foundation for this study.The second part(chapter three)is about the theories,models,and methods,answering the issue about how to measure the relationship between tourism economic growth and resourceenvironmental pressure.On the basis of combing the theory,method and index of human-land relationship,ecological footprint,decoupling,and eco-efficiency.Taking the decoupling relationship,Grainger causality and eco-efficiency as the breakthrough point.Construction of decoupling elasticity model and its evaluation indicator system,Grainger causality test model,tourism eco-efficiency measurement model and its evaluation indicator system,determines model of tourism eco-efficiency and its evaluation indicator system.Thus,the research framework and analysis system are established,empirically analyzing the relationship between tourism economic growth and resource-environmental pressure and its relationship with the level of tourism sustainable development,scientifically assessing the state and potential of sustainable development of tourism destination,proposing an alternative path to promote the sustainable development of tourism destination.The third part(chapter four,five,six and seven)is empirical research,the study on law and characteristics of the relationship between tourism economic growth and resource-environmental pressure.Chapter four introduces the Huangshan Scenic Area is a representative and typical case.The historical evolution,tourism development,and protection of resources and environment of the Huangshan Scenic Area are also introduced in detail.The method and process of obtaining and analyzing the data are also introduced.And then,formed the overall understanding of the economic growth and resource-environmental pressure of Huangshan Scenic Area.Chapter five uses 19812014 time series data of economic growth,resource consumption,and environmental pollution,analyzes the decoupling relationship,degree,and its evolution law between tourism economic growth and resource-environmental pressure.Chapter six provides an empirical analysis on the causality relationship between tourism economic growth,resource consumption,and environmental pollution,identifies the critical resource-environmental factors that restrict the tourism economic growth and internal causation.Chapter seven make empirical analysis on the characteristics of tourism eco-efficiency and its evolution law.Tobit regression analysis model was also used to test the influencing factors,direction,and degree of tourism eco-efficiency,and to identify key factors affecting tourism eco-efficiency.The four part(chapter eight)is the theoretical summary.Summary of theoretical and empirical research results of the study,answering the relationship between tourism economic growth and resource-environmental pressure,and how to promote the sustainable development of tourism destination capacity assessment and path selection.At last,this study points out the limitations and future research.The results are as follows.First,the study proposed and verified the general framework on the relationship between tourism economic growth and resource-environmental pressure based on "state recognition→causality test→efficiency evaluation".It provided the theoretical foundation for scientifically examining the regional economic function and resource-environmental effect of tourism development,comprehensively analyzing the relationship between tourism economic growth and resource-environmental pressure,systematically evaluating the state of sustainability of tourism destination.Second,there exists a coupling relationship between the decoupling state between tourism economic growth and resource-environmental pressure and the sustainability of tourism destination.Decoupling analysis shows that the decoupling relationship between tourism economic growth and resource-environmental pressure of Huangshan Scenic Area during 1982 to 2014 was generally in weak decoupling state(which is relatively ideal),but it still had a certain gap to strong decoupling(or absolute decoupling)goal.Meanwhile,the decoupling status between tourism economic growth and resource-environmental pressure and the sustainability of tourism destination respectively follows the Kuznets cycle of "expansive negative decoupling→fluctuating decoupling→fluctuating negative decoupling→weak decoupling" and "weak→strong→weak→strong".The decoupling states and impact factors have the great difference at the different progressing stage.Third,the mutual feedback between tourism economic growth and resource-environmental pressure had an interactively sensitive difference,that is tourism economic growth leads to the obvious increase of resource-environmental pressure,while the effect of the increase of resourceenvironmental pressure to the tourism economic growth is relatively weak.The results of Granger causality analysis show that the tourism income of Huangshan Scenic Area during 1981 to 2014 does not have long-term co-integration relationship with the average wage of employs,food and beverage biomass consumption and waste gas emissions,but has a long-term co-integration relationship with new fixed asset investment,energy consumption,water consumption,emissions of garbage,and emissions of sewage,and the former was the one-way Granger cause of the later,that is to say tourism economic growth led to the increase of resource-environmental pressure.This causal direction mainly manifested as tourism economic growth have a significant influence on the resources consumption such as capital,energy and water and the emission of solid waste and sewage,while the influence of the change of resource-environmental pressure on tourism economic growth was not significant.Meanwhile,the response degree of tourism economic growth to different kinds of resources environmental pressure was:garbage>sewage>water resource>energy>capital.Fourth,the evolution of tourism eco-efficiency had stage characteristics,tourism ecoefficiency and its impact factors were different at the different stage.The results of eco-efficiency assessment show that the tourism eco-efficiency of Huangshan Scenic Area during 1981 to 2014 was generally in the medium lever(which is relatively ideal),and had sustained growth trend and considerable growth potential,the increase of eco-efficiency mainly rooted in the promotion of scale efficiency.Meanwhile,the evolution of eco-efficiency undergoes evolutions of "increasing returns to scale→constant returns to scale→decreasing returns to scale" and "initial inefficient stage→rapid growth stage→mature efficient stage→downside risk stage".Fifth,the key influence factors of tourism eco-efficiency were different at different time and place.Scale effect,structure effect and technology effect had a prominent positive impact on the tourism eco-efficiency of Huangshan Scenic Area,the capital effect had a prominent negative impact on the tourism eco-efficiency,while the environmental protection programming like the end treatment of waste hadn’t significantly promoted the improvement of tourism eco-efficiency.Theoretically,the research on the relationship between tourism economic growth and resourceenvironmental pressure is a breakthrough point of the research on the sustainable development of tourism destination.This research attempts to innovate regarding the three aspects below.First,in terms of research content,based on "state recognition→causality test→efficiency evaluation",this study systematically proposed the general framework of the research on the relationship between tourism economic growth and resource-environmental pressure and provided the theoretical foundation for the sustainability assessment and path choice of the tourism destination.Second,in terms of research method,this study improved the correlation model,method,and evaluation system of the research on the relationship between tourism economic growth and resource-environmental pressure,which has some reference value for relative research.Finally,in terms of research scale,this study took the scenic area as the study case and expanded the spatial scale of the research on the relationship between tourism economic growth and resource-environmental pressure.