1,259
Views
34
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Articles

How to improve tourism energy efficiency to achieve sustainable tourism: evidence from China

ORCID Icon, &
Pages 1-16 | Received 15 Sep 2017, Accepted 12 Dec 2018, Published online: 14 Jan 2019
 

ABSTRACT

This study constructs the biennial Malmquist index, including undesirable outputs, to evaluate tourism energy efficiency and decompose its changes using a sample of 30 provinces in China over the period of 9 years from 2005 to 2013. The changes in tourism energy efficiency can be attributed to five factors, including total factor productivity, capital-energy ratio, labour-energy ratio, energy supply composition and output composition. The study results show that the energy efficiency of the tourism industry is much lower than that of the industry as a whole and not greener. Total factor productivity is a key positive driving force to boost tourism energy efficiency. Capital-labour ratio gradually overtook the total factor productivity as the tourism energy efficiency change’s largest contribution since 2010 and thus became the biggest inhibitor for increasing tourism energy efficiency. The rational utilization of capital and new capital investment should accompany energy-saving technology and is essential for sustainable tourism.

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the anonymous reviewers providing critical comments and suggestions to the original version of this paper. Meanwhile, the authors also gratefully acknowledge the financial support from National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant number: 71704125), China's Major University Research Project Funds from Sichuan University (Grant number: SKQY201772), and the Innovation Spark Project Funds from Sichuan University (Grant number: 2018hhf-38).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Log in via your institution

Log in to Taylor & Francis Online

PDF download + Online access

  • 48 hours access to article PDF & online version
  • Article PDF can be downloaded
  • Article PDF can be printed
USD 53.00 Add to cart

Issue Purchase

  • 30 days online access to complete issue
  • Article PDFs can be downloaded
  • Article PDFs can be printed
USD 273.00 Add to cart

* Local tax will be added as applicable

Related Research

People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read.

Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine.

Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.
Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab.