Tourism water footprint: an empirical analysis of Mount Huangshan

ABSTRACT

Water is an important factor for the sustainable development of tourism. We constructed a comprehensive model of the tourism water footprint (TWF), including tourism sewage and water for management, and used the world heritage Mount Huangshan as an example. The results showed that the total TWF, which included green, blue and grey water of Mount Huangshan in 2012, was about 10.19 million m³/year, approximately per tourist 3.39 m³/day or 3387 L/day. Tourism sewage and food were the main factors of water consumption. The spatial transfer of TWF led the spillover of tourism environmental impact, not only affecting Mount Huangshan but the Huangshan City and even nationwide. Tourist flow and temperature had a highly significant positive correlation with the TWF. Quantifying the TWF can reflect the pressure of tourists on water resources, and provide an effective decision-making basis for rational use of water resources.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism water footprint
• virtual water
• tourism sewage
• tourism food
• spatial transfer
• Mount Huangshan

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Acknowledgements

Great thanks to the Huangshan Management Committee. The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [No. 41271161]; 2016 Annual Academic Innovation Program for Graduate Students in Jiangsu Province [No. 541]; China National Tourism Administration [No. 15TAAG011]; the scholarship under the China Scholarship Council [No. 201606190143].