Studying regional low-carbon development: A case study of Sichuan Province in China.

The unavoidable option for socially sustainable development is a low-carbon economy. One of the essential steps for China to attain high-quality development is reducing carbon emissions. It is necessary to realize low-carbon development in Sichuan, as it is not only an important economic zone but also an ecological protected area. The concurrent relationship among energy consumption, carbon emissions, and economic growth was examined in this study using the Tapio decoupling indicator, and the factors affecting energy consumption and carbon emissions in Sichuan were broken down using the logarithmic mean Divisia indicator (LMDI). The findings demonstrate a fundamental relative decoupling relationship between Sichuan's energy use and carbon emissions. Analysis of energy consumption and carbon emissions in Sichuan Province from 2005 to 2020 shows distinct patterns. From 2005 to 2012, in 2014, and from 2016 to 2020, the relationship between energy use and carbon emissions was relatively decoupled, with decoupling values ranging between 0 and 1. Absolute decoupling occurred in specific years: 2010, from 2013 to 2018, and in 2020. These periods are characterized by economic growth alongside reductions in carbon emissions. Factors affecting energy consumption and carbon emissions were consistently analyzed, showing similar impacts throughout the study periods. We find that population and economic growth are the main driving forces of these effects. The effects of energy intensity and industrial structure mainly play restraining roles, and the latter has a slightly weaker effect than the former.

Environmental regulation and tourism industry development: evidence from China.

Tourism is a large, environment-dependent global industry. As an important policy tool for environmental protection, environmental regulation plays a significant role in development of the tourism industry. Using the panel data of 284 prefecture-level cities in China from 2004 to 2018, this paper innovatively analyzes the impact mechanism of environmental regulation on China's tourism development from the perspective of the integration of institutional and environmental economics. At the same time, this paper uses the instrumental variable two-stage least squares method (IV-2SLS) to solve the endogeneity problem of environmental regulation and China's tourism development, which makes the research conclusions more robust. The main results were as follows: (1) environmental regulation significantly promoted the development of the tourism industry. Specifically, tourist arrival (TA) and tourism revenue (TR) increased 8.79% and 8.64%, respectively, when the intensity of environmental regulation increased by 1%. This effect was still robust after applying a series of tests; (2) the impact of environmental regulation on the development of the tourism industry was heterogeneous for three aspects: the domestic and inbound tourism market, urban type, and urban location; (3) environmental regulation contributed to China's tourism industry development through industrial structure upgrading, technological innovation, and urban image promotion. Our findings offer valuable insight for the concerned authority and tourism sector to understand the positive role of environmental regulation in promoting high-quality development of the tourism industry by corresponding policy-making, industrial structure upgrading, technological innovation, and urban reputation building.

Social network and tourism consumption by households: Evidence from China.

Tourism consumption is not only an important means by which to improve residents' sense of happiness but is also the main way to promote national economic development. In a traditional relational society such as China, it remains unclear how social network affects tourism consumption by households. Here, we evaluated the impact of the social network on tourism consumption by Chinese households using the data of 3254 samples from the China Family Panel Studies. The empirical results from the ordinary least square method showed that the social network promotes tourism consumption, which can be projected to increase by about 28% for every 1% increase in social network strength. This was further confirmed using the instrumental variable method to address the issue of endogenous social network formation, as well as other robustness checks. The impact of the social network on tourism consumption was heterogeneous. Compared with other residents, there were higher positive effects for high-income families, households with a head aged 35-44 years, urban families, and households in eastern China. The quantile regression results revealed that the impact of the social network was weakened with increasing tourism consumption by households. These results are crucial for policymakers, in that they could form good habits of tourism consumption and strengthen tourism market management, especially for the management of tourism negative events in the context of new media.