Study On Tourism Water Footprint Measure Model And Its Practical Application

With the continued growth of global economy and world's population,many countries and regions are facing severe water shortage crisis.Continued expansion and diversifying development of tourism make it be one of the world's fastest growing economy sectors.But at the same time,the impact on travel destinations'water environment has become increasingly prominent.Unlike the previous studies only focused on tourism entity water,tourism water footprint theory links real water and virtual water efficiently,measuring completely true consumption of water resource.Tourism water footprint theory developed a new vision of global water research.In 2002,Professor Hoekstra proposed Water Footprint which is the cumulative virtual water content of all goods and services consumed by one individual or by the individuals of one country.Based on this conception,this article proposed the concept of tourism water footprint which is the water of all goods and services consumed by tourists of one country.This article also constructed the tourism water footprint model,covering tourism catering,accommodation,transportation,visiting,shopping,entertainment,management and wastewater treatment.The paper is organized as follows.Section 1,which includes chapter 1 and 2,sets up the background and significance of tourism water environmental studies,research ideas and methods.Section 2,including chapter 3 to 5,builds the model and conducts an empirical study.It proposes tourism water footprint,constructs the tourism water footprint model and uses survey data of Huangshan National Park to calculate and analyze tourism water footprint of Huangshan National park in 2010-2012.Section 3 sets up the main conclusions and research prospects in chapter 6.It points out the main conclusions of the study and the further work.This can summarize main conclusions as following.(1)Tourism is a lifestyle of high demand and high consumption for water resource.It can't be ignored with its significant impact on the sustainable development of the region.Tourism water footprint of Huangshan National Park is 9657143.9 m3 and 3.21 m3 per capita in 2012.It's 1.70 times China's per capita water footprint.Since the complete food data is difficult to obtain,waste water monitoring data also is not accurate enough,the calculation result is smaller than the actual result.(2)Tourism waste water footprint and food water footprint are main factors of water consumption,accounting respectively for 62.33%,31.63%.Though reducing the number of Huangshan National Park hotel and changing its' diet(reducing meat,fruits and increasing vegetables),it could reduce the virtual water and the amount of dilution of waste water,which is an important way to reduce tourist water footprint.(3)Transfer among districts on water footprint greatly impact on regional tourism water footprint.The virtual water used in the area of Huangshan National Park was all imported from outside of the area.Especially,more than half of virtual water(56.20%)was from Huangshan City.Tourism water footprint caused by inter-regional mobility of tourists,especially inter-district transfer of food water footprint,occupying destination or other areas' water,but also reducing the tourist origin's water.At the same time,it pushes the tourist destination economic develop and also promotes the logistics,capital flow to other areas.Tourism water footprint has the significant seasonal changes.And it's consistent with the seasonal distribution of tourism.(4)Tourist traffic and local temperatures have highly significant positive correlation with tourist water footprint.When Huangshan National Park has 15-32 million tourists in month,the growth trend of amount of tourism water footprint slows down.It's conducive to the effective use of water resources.Improving agricultural production sector's ability to adapt to climate change,and changing production technology,will be helpful to reducing the pressures on water resources system.According to the related research on Huangshan National Park tourism water footprint,Huangshan National Park water resource was relatively scarce,but it's still most of the self-sufficiency of the state and higher water use efficiency.This paper proposes the concept of tourism water footprint and builds measure model of tourism water footprint.At the same time,it achieves some progress on structural analysis,factors,evaluating indicators and so on.But it still can study in-depth from the following two aspects:First,measuring the virtual water content of the product exactly.Second,increasing the comparative studies of different spatial and temporal scales,different types and different economic development levels.It will help to reveal in depth variation characteristics and rules of tourist water footprint and better promote the sustainable development of regional tourism.