Spatiotemporal Characteristics of the Correlation among Tourism, CO₂ Emissions, and Economic Growth in China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article aims at exploring the nexus between tourism, CO2 emissions, and economic growth from a diachronic perspective responding to China’s “double-carbon” goal. 

The article focuses on the 2010s providing interesting results. However, the article does not provide enough information concerning the origin and quality of the original data, exploring their possible limitation of them. Moreover, while the article explicitly refers to the pre-covid period no mention is given to the possible impact of the pandemic in changing the trend or transforming the scenario utterly so the conclusions may not be applicable for the future. 

I strongly recommend the authors revise the paper first of all discussing in depth the origin, quality and limitation of the data used, explaining the criteria of selection of the sources and the reasons for the choice.

Secondly, to make explicit the link with the political debate at the moment in China, the possible impact and intent of the article on the policy reform. 

Thirdly, the Covid-19 pandemic should be considered at least in the phases of discussion of the paper in order to actualize the result of the paper making the paper relevant to a wide, international audience. 

See:

Andrews, 2020, "Tourism and COVID-19"

Borges Barabarosa et al. 2021, "The effects of COVID-19 in the tourist society: an anthropological insight of the trivialisation of death and life"

Fontefrancesco, 2020, "food festivals and local development in Italy"

Author Response

Reviewer 1: Reviewer(s)' Comments to Author:

Comments to the Author

SYNOPSIS: The article aims at exploring the nexus between tourism, CO₂ emissions, and economic growth from a diachronic perspective responding to China’s “double-carbon” goal. The article focuses on the 2010s providing interesting results.

 

We express our gratitude for your positive assessment and have improved the quality of the paper according to your comments.

 

SPECIFIC COMMENTS AND NECESSARY REVISIONS:

 

The article does not provide enough information concerning the origin and quality of the original data, exploring their possible limitation of them. Moreover, while the article explicitly refers to the pre-covid period no mention is given to the possible impact of the pandemic in changing the trend or transforming the scenario utterly so the conclusions may not be applicable for the future. 

I strongly recommend the authors revise the paper first of all discussing in depth the origin, quality and limitation of the data used, explaining the criteria of selection of the sources and the reasons for the choice.

First, the tourism industry encompasses both the direct and indirect energy consumption and carbon emissions. Direct energy use is derived from fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, while the indirect is rooted in the production of various types of intermediate products for the tourism industry (Liu et al., 2011; Wu & Shi, 2011). Hence, when accounting for environmental impact, it is pragmatic to focus on tourism-related industries (Becken & Patterson, 2006; Wu & Shi, 2011; Wang et al., 2016) as it has been noted that carbon sources mainly originate from three sectors (i.e., transport, accommodation and activities) (UNWTO-UNEP-WMO, 2008). Thus, in this paper, direct energy use and carbon emissions are calculated.

 

Second, from the perspective of calculation method, China has not established a complete tourism satellite account. Also, the China Energy Statistics Yearbook does not include any specific energy use items that relate to tourism. In view of the actual situation, we choose the bottom-up approach to estimate the direct energy consumption and CO₂ emissions in every province as the bottom-up approach starts from the tourist data at the destination. In the estimation process by using bottom-up approach, both the energy consumption per unit and CO₂ emissions per unit in three tourism sectors are collected on the basis of previous studies and combined with Chinese actual situation. As the comment proposed, there are limitations about the data used, especially the parameters in the approach. The differences of tourism transportation, accommodation, and activities among various provinces of China were not taken into account in the parameters, which may lead to simplification of the model and widen the gap between the results and the real situation. Meanwhile, the statistical yearbooks of various provinces in China do not include all the data that may be needed for the study, such as the proportion of different types of tourism activities. This may lead to underestimate the differences in carbon emissions from tourism activities among various provinces. Based on your suggestion, we have added the limitations about the data in Section 5 “Discussion”.

Third, from the temporal aspect, since the global outbreak of the COVID-19 in 2020, China has taken an active and continuous flow-control approach to stop the rapid spread of the epidemic, and the economic development has been sacrificed to some extent. Among all the industrial sectors, the tourism is one of the most seriously affected industry, given its human mobility feature. Since 2020, the tourism industry has experienced an abnormal market development state under strict policy control, thus we believe that it is of no practical meaning to explore the temporal and spatial differences of tourism carbon emissions across the huge China in such a period of time. In view of this, the research time chose in this paper is from the new century to the time before the outbreak, that is, 2000-2019. Based on your suggestion, we have added the explanation about the time-series in Section 3.1. “Research framework”.

Secondly, to make explicit the link with the political debate at the moment in China, the possible impact and intent of the article on the policy reform. 

A series of emission reduction target setting policies, industrial policies, and energy policies have been implemented in China for addressing climate changes and promoting the low-carbon development in the last decade. Looking at the Climate Governance Practices in the past decade, China’s climate policy development has entered a sustained and powerful policy promotion stage, not even been impacted by the widespread of COVID-19. However, for the tourism industry, there are few specific policies to guide the low-carbon development. At the same time, there are also some problems in the policy synergy between the central government and local governments, as well as between provincial governments (Fu et al., 2021). Therefore, an in-depth understanding of the spatiotemporal correlations and differences among tourism, CO₂ emissions, and economy at the provincial, regional, and national scales is of great significance for proposing emission-reduction policies for tourism, eliminating administrative barriers to promote regional low-carbon coordinated development and effectively supporting the “double carbon” goal. Through our research, we put forward many suggestions for tourism management departments to manage the increasing TE under the framework of national carbon emission reduction policy. We have added the necessary explanations in Section 5 “Discussion”.

Thirdly, the Covid-19 pandemic should be considered at least in the phases of discussion of the paper in order to actualize the result of the paper making the paper relevant to a wide, international audience. 

See: Andrews, 2020, "Tourism and COVID-19"; Borges Barabarosa et al. 2021, "The effects of COVID-19 in the tourist society: an anthropological insight of the trivialisation of death and life"; Fontefrancesco, 2020, "food festivals and local development in Italy".

Since 2020, the COVID-19 has spread all over the world. It is not difficult to understand its severe impact on the tourism industry, and some scholars believe that the spread of the epidemic has changed travel behavior (Andrews, 2020). For China, there is still great uncertainty about the impact of the COVID-19 on China’s inbound tourism in the subsequent stages. However, due to the strong resilience of the tourism industry, the fundamentals of China’s sustainable tourism economy have not changed, and the potential domestic tourism demand is still very strong (Huang, 2020). It is foreseeable that China’s tourism industry will continue its pre-epidemic development trend in the post epidemic era, and the corresponding energy consumption and carbon emissions will continue to grow. Therefore, China’s carbon emission reduction policy will not cease given the influence of the epidemic. What we should do is to give practical suggestions for lowing the intensity of tourism carbon emissions for China.

Based on your suggestion, we have added the content about the linkage between tourism, the emission-reduction policy, and COVID-19 in Section 5 “Discussion”.

 

Thank you again for your review!

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The article offers an interesting and relevant approach to assessing the impact of tourism development on CO2 emissions in China. The study provides spatio temporal aspects to establish a nexus between tourism development, CO2 emissions, and economic growth using different spatio temporal contexts (national, regional, and provinces). Different approaches are proposed to examine various elements of the tourism CO2 nexus, providing evidence on CO2 development (growth and intensity), agglomeration - dispersion effects across regions - provinces, and decomposition of driving forces behind CO2 emissions within tourism.   Some comments to the authors:  

1. Previous studies support the parameters defined for this model. However, as the parameters are set to represent the national or province level, they will likely suffer from high aggregation bias. Provinces in China are vast and diverse (tourism activities, facilities, technologies, mobility, etc.), suggesting that assuming parameters at the province level simplifies the model and computations but may not reflect the heterogeneity and diversity of China. Perhaps the author(s) need to present the limitations that this model suffers from the highly aggregated level in the data and parameters.  

2. The Results section has little comparison or discussion with earlier findings, particularly in the context of China. The author(s) can add some comparisons with earlier findings in similar studies (either to support the results or point out developments not captured in earlier studies). Moreover, this study borrows the parameters set in earlier papers that also look at similar nexus tourism - CO2 - growth, suggesting that some results may be comparable and worth comparing.   Example   [6] Chen, Thapa, and Yan (2018) [15] Tang, Jie, Shi, Liu, Bi (2014) [36] Gössling (2002) [41] Wu, Shi (2011) Among others  

3. Providing more details on energy-related policies in China in the last decade will be helpful. It's not very clear which policies, both at the national and regional levels, were implemented during the period that may have supported the reduction in energy intensity. The author(s) already provide some excellent notes on policies, but perhaps more details are needed to avoid generalizations.  

4. The Conclusion section is fascinating. However, it seems to be very long. It may be advisable to split the section into a Discussion (A section after Results elaborating on the results, policy implications, limitations of the study, and so on), then Conclusions with the main findings and contributions to the literature.

Author Response

Reviewer 2: Reviewer(s)' Comments to Author:

Comments to the Author

SYNOPSIS: The article offers an interesting and relevant approach to assessing the impact of tourism development on CO₂ emissions in China. The study provides spatio temporal aspects to establish a nexus between tourism development, CO₂ emissions, and economic growth using different spatio temporal contexts (national, regional, and provinces). Different approaches are proposed to examine various elements of the tourism CO₂ nexus, providing evidence on CO₂ development (growth and intensity), agglomeration - dispersion effects across regions - provinces, and decomposition of driving forces behind CO₂ emissions within tourism.

 

We express our gratitude for your positive assessment and have improved the quality of the paper according to your comments.

 

SPECIFIC COMMENTS AND NECESSARY REVISIONS:

1. Previous studies support the parameters defined for this model. However, as the parameters are set to represent the national or province level, they will likely suffer from high aggregation bias. Provinces in China are vast and diverse (tourism activities, facilities, technologies, mobility, etc.), suggesting that assuming parameters at the province level simplifies the model and computations but may not reflect the heterogeneity and diversity of China. Perhaps the author(s) need to present the limitations that this model suffers from the highly aggregated level in the data and parameters.  

From the perspective of calculation method, China has not established a complete tourism satellite account. Also, the China Energy Statistics Yearbook does not include any specific energy use items that relate to tourism. In view of the actual situation, we choose the bottom-up approach to estimate the direct energy consumption and CO₂ emissions in every province as the bottom-up approach starts from the tourist data at the destination. In the estimation process by using bottom-up approach, both the energy consumption per unit and CO₂ emissions per unit in three tourism sectors are collected on the basis of previous studies and combined with Chinese actual situation.

However, there are limitations about the data used, especially the parameters in the approach. The differences of tourism transportation, accommodation, and activities among various provinces of China were not taken into account in the parameters, which may lead to simplification of the model and widen the gap between the results and the real situation. Meanwhile, the statistical yearbooks of various provinces in China do not include all the data that may be needed for the study, such as the proportion of different types of tourism activities. This may lead to underestimate the differences in carbon emissions from tourism activities among various provinces. Based on your suggestion, we have added the limitations about the data in Section 5 “Discussion”.

2. The Results section has little comparison or discussion with earlier findings, particularly in the context of China. The author(s) can add some comparisons with earlier findings in similar studies (either to support the results or point out developments not captured in earlier studies). Moreover, this study borrows the parameters set in earlier papers that also look at similar nexus tourism - CO₂ - growth, suggesting that some results may be comparable and worth comparing. Example [6] Chen, Thapa, and Yan (2018) [15] Tang, Jie, Shi, Liu, Bi (2014) [36] Gössling (2002) [41] Wu, Shi (2011) Among others.  

According to your comment, we have added more comparisons between our research results and previous findings in Section 5 “Discussion”.

3. Providing more details on energy-related policies in China in the last decade will be helpful. It's not very clear which policies, both at the national and regional levels, were implemented during the period that may have supported the reduction in energy intensity. The author(s) already provide some excellent notes on policies, but perhaps more details are needed to avoid generalizations.  

A series of emission reduction target setting policies, industrial policies, and energy policies have been implemented in China for addressing climate changes and promoting the low-carbon development in the last decade. In 2011 and 2016, the State Council initiated the implementation plan for controlling greenhouse gas emissions during the 12th Five Year Plan and the 13th Five Year Plan, respectively. In 2014, the national plan for addressing climate change (2014-2020) was issued, which has estab-lished a relatively complete target orientation, policy, and action system for national low-carbon development. In 2016, the Ministry of industry and information technology issued the industrial green development plan (2016-2020), which requires that by 2020, the promotion mechanism of industrial green development will be basically formed. In 2018, China’s national development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration issued the clean energy consumption action plan (2018-2020). In 2019, China began to implement the green building evaluation standard. Since the outbreak of the global COVID-19 in early 2020, China has adopted strict social control to cope with the spread of the epidemic, and the industrial economy has also been seriously affected. However, the epidemic has not affected the process of the Chinese government to promote low-carbon development. In 2020, General Secretary Xi put forward China’s “double carbon” goal at the UN General Assembly. In 2021, the State Council issued the comprehensive work plan for energy conservation and emission reduction during the 14th Five Year Plan period. The national carbon emission trading market was officially launched in the same year. In June 2022, the Ministry of ecology and environment and other departments issued the national climate change adaptation strategy 2035, proposing that by 2035, the climate adaptive society will be basically completed.

Looking at the Climate Governance Practices in the past decade, China’s climate policy development has entered a sustained and powerful policy promotion stage, not even been impacted by the widespread of COVID-19. However, for the tourism industry, there are few specific policies to guide the low-carbon development. At the same time, there are also some problems in the policy synergy between the central government and local governments, as well as between provincial governments (Fu et al. 2021). Therefore, an in-depth understanding of the spatiotemporal correlations and differences among tourism, CO₂ emissions, and economy at the provincial, regional, and national scales is of great significance for proposing emission-reduction policies for tourism, eliminating administrative barriers to promote regional low-carbon coordinated development and effectively supporting the “double carbon” goal.

Based on your suggestion, we have added more details about the policies in Section 5 “Discussion”.

4. The Conclusion section is fascinating. However, it seems to be very long. It may be advisable to split the section into a Discussion (A section after Results elaborating on the results, policy implications, limitations of the study, and so on), then Conclusions with the main findings and contributions to the literature.

We have added a new section “Discussion” based on your suggestion, which includes results, comparisons, policy implications, and limitations. Moreover, a new “Conclusion” has been added.

 

Thank you again for your review!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

-  The literature review needs to engage with more recent bibliography (last 5 years).

- A more clear steps methodology and better justification of methods is needed. 

- Discussion of the results needs to improvements, comparing results with those of other authors/papers/studies.

 

Author Response

Reviewer 3: Reviewer(s)' Comments to Author:

SPECIFIC COMMENTS AND NECESSARY REVISIONS:

The literature review needs to engage with more recent bibliography (last 5 years).

We have added more content in Section 2 “Literature review” and more recent literatures are quoted based on your suggestion.

A more clear steps methodology and better justification of methods is needed. 

The tourism industry encompasses both the direct and indirect energy consumption and carbon emissions. Direct energy use is derived from fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, while the indirect is rooted in the production of various types of intermediate products for the tourism industry (Liu et al., 2011; Wu & Shi, 2011). Hence, when accounting for environmental impact, it is pragmatic to focus on tourism-related industries (Becken & Patterson, 2006; Wu & Shi, 2011; Wang et al., 2016) as it has been noted that carbon sources mainly originate from three sectors (i.e., transport, accommodation and activities) (UNWTO-UNEP-WMO, 2008). Thus, in this paper, direct energy use and carbon emissions are calculated.

From the perspective of calculation method, China has not established a complete tourism satellite account. Also, the China Energy Statistics Yearbook does not include any specific energy use items that relate to tourism. In view of the actual situation, we choose the bottom-up approach to estimate the direct energy consumption and CO₂ emissions in every province as the bottom-up approach starts from the tourist data at the destination. In the estimation process by using bottom-up approach, both the energy consumption per unit and CO₂ emissions per unit in three tourism sectors are collected on the basis of previous studies and combined with Chinese actual situation.

Based on your suggestion, we have added necessary explanations in the Section 3 “Materials and methods”.

Discussion of the results needs to improvements, comparing results with those of other authors/papers/studies.

We have added a new section “Discussion” based on your suggestion, which includes results, comparisons, policy implications, and limitations. Moreover, a new “Conclusion” has been added.

 

Thank you again for your review!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The article entitled Spatiotemporal characteristics of the correlation among tourism, CO2 emissions, and economic growth in China is convincingly presenting a complex consistent analysis of intra and inter regional variations of the CO2 emissions correlated to tourism and economic growth of China.

As suggestions for improving the scientific discourse of the paper I would recommend:

1.       In literature review a subchapter / one or more paragraphs could be dedicated to modeling and matching attempts of scientists to link CO2 emissions to tourism sector from different perspectives including sustainability and policy issues (e.g. Neger et al., 2021, Reprint of: Carbon intensity of tourism in Austria: Estimates and policy implications, https://www-sciencedirect-com.am.e-nformation.ro/science/article/pii/S2213078021000700?via%3Dihub)

or using different methodological approaches (e.g. Surugiu et al., 2012 An Input-Output Approach of CO2 Emissions in Tourism Sector in Post-Communist Romania, https://www-sciencedirect-com.am.e-nformation.ro/science/article/pii/S2212567112002626?via%3Dihub)

Some comparative perspectives might also be offered as besides China other regional attempts were done in the recent past to model and match tourism to CO2 emissions at different territorial levels (national, regional).

 

1.       Some expressions such as “over the years” in Table 1 and subchapter 3.2.6 need clarifications and the years / period of analysis should be stated.

 

2.       In the context of the presented implications of the study and of future possible changes the paper could also present some continuation directions and future perspectives of research, possibly related also with the used methods and indexes.

Author Response

Reviewer 4: Reviewer(s)' Comments to Author:

Comments to the Author

SYNOPSIS: The article entitled Spatiotemporal characteristics of the correlation among tourism, CO₂ emissions, and economic growth in China is convincingly presenting a complex consistent analysis of intra and inter regional variations of the CO₂ emissions correlated to tourism and economic growth of China.

 

We express our gratitude for your positive assessment and have improved the quality of the paper according to your comments.

 

SPECIFIC COMMENTS AND NECESSARY REVISIONS:

In literature review a subchapter / one or more paragraphs could be dedicated to modeling and matching attempts of scientists to link CO₂ emissions to tourism sector from different perspectives including sustainability and policy issues (e.g. Neger et al., 2021, Reprint of: Carbon intensity of tourism in Austria: Estimates and policy implications, https://www-sciencedirect-com.am.e-nformation.ro/science/article/pii/S2213078021000700?via%3Dihub)

or using different methodological approaches (e.g. Surugiu et al., 2012 An Input-Output Approach of CO2 Emissions in Tourism Sector in Post-Communist Romania, https://www-sciencedirect-com.am.e-nformation.ro/science/article/pii/S2212567112002626?via%3Dihub)

Some comparative perspectives might also be offered as besides China other regional attempts were done in the recent past to model and match tourism to CO₂ emissions at different territorial levels (national, regional).

Based on your suggestion, we have added a new Section 2.1 “Impact of tourism on CO₂ emissions”. Moreover, we have revised Section 2.2 “TE measurement” to make more explicit about the review of TE measurement from different scales and the various methods.

       Some expressions such as “over the years” in Table 1 and subchapter 3.2.6 need clarifications and the years / period of analysis should be stated.

 We have revised the expressions based on your suggestion.

       In the context of the presented implications of the study and of future possible changes the paper could also present some continuation directions and future perspectives of research, possibly related also with the used methods and indexes.

We have added a new section “Discussion”, which includes results, comparisons, policy implications, and limitations. Moreover, a new “Conclusion” has been added.

In the part of “limitations”, we point out the limitations about the data and then make a future research direction. The model parameters can be further modified to make the results more accurate, and more methods could be applied to calculate Chinese TE from different spatial scales, and then the rationality of the methods can be better justified by comparing the research results.

 

Thank you again for your review!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper presents quality in its current form to be published.