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.
ORCID
Lamei He http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0373-0530