Research On The Eco-Efficiency Of Low Carbon Tourism

Tourism is an highly energy-intensive industry and has attracted great attentions asan important contributor to climate change through grennhouse gas (GHG) emissions.Consequently, the need to limit fossil energy use has been highlighted as aprecondition for achieving sustainable tourism development.However, tourism is alsoone of the most important sectors of the world economy, increasing reductionrequirements of CO2and energy use could substantially decrease the economicwelfare of countries and destinations. This conflicts constitute s an phenomenoncalled as Low Carbon Dilemma (LCD) which including Low Carbon Trap andGrowth Congestion.Eco-efficiency is a concept that prescribes reducing the amount of energy andnatural resources used, as well as wastes and pollutants discharged in the productionof goods and services. In this dissertation,the case study abou Hainan provincetourism eco-efficiency is implemented through building tourism carbon footprintmodel, tourism energy use model and tourism eco-efficiency model with applying thebottom-up approach to measure CO2emissions of Hainan province in2012,then theinterplay of environmental damage and economic gains is thus analysed within thecontext of tourism. Carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions and energy use are assessedin relation to the revenues generated,allowing for conclusions about the eco-efficiencyof tourism.At the same time,we has got a series of beneficial research result abouttourist and entrepreneur responses to eco-efficient destination planning options,thesuggestion to policy maker and destination planner associated with how to achievinggreater levels of eco-effciency.According to the content of the article,The mainconclusion and innovative points of the dissertation lie in the following aspects:(1)With the development of the research about relationship between climate changeand tourism, lots of foreign rsearch results associated with low carbon tourism andtourism eco-efficicency stimulated great inspiration to domestic academic circle.(2)The essence of low-carbon tourism is featured with minimizationof tourismcarbon emission, energy use and optimization of tourism eco-efficiency.The conceptof tourism eco-efficiency is rooted in the eco-efficiency concept. The basiccharacteristic of Eco-efficiency is creating more value with less impact. Overall, we conclude that eco-efficiency is a useful concept to analyse the combinedenvironmental and economic performance of tourism. The eco-efficiency can help toassess the relative importance of different tourism sectors in terms of environmentalimpacts and financial value generation, and thus provide insights of how to improveits environmental performance in the economically most feasible way.Therefore,basedon sustainability criteria,the tourism eco-efficiency providing a new methods toresolve the Low Carbon Dilemma problem.(3) Hainan Province is a typical long-distance-based tourist market structure, whichfeatured with high proportion of aircraft in origin to destination transport,not long stayin destination and the lower level of tourist consumption.therefore, transportprofoundly affects tourist energy use and carbon dioxide emissions in the Hainanprovince tourism sector,and the tourism eco-efficiency is relatively low comparedwith other regions.(4) The quantitative analysis indicates that tourism eco-efficiency can be increasedby reduction of CO2emission,energy use saving and increasing revenues,which canbe achieved by authorities through low-carbon consciousness improvement, transportoptimization, eco-efficiency planning,technologies innovation,consumption increase,activity management,regulation control and pricea djustment and so on. In terms of ageneral finding the cases tudies suggest that the longer the travel distance the lessfavourable becomes the eco-efficiency, Long stays improve eco-efficiency as do highexpenditures per day.Tourism energy consumption bill and carbon footprint is a resultof a multiple choice and decision, and the degree of support for various tourismeco-efficiency planning options differed by market segments.Although the research isconducted in Hainan province, its findings can inform destination planners andmanagers in general about potential market responses to such eco-efficiencystrategies.Owing to its principle and mefhods, tourism eco-efficiency could become a morewidely used tool for re-structuring tourism towards sustainability.