中国旅游经济增长与碳排放的耦合关系研究

厘清旅游经济增长与能源消费及CO2排放之间的关系对于实现增长前提下的低碳旅游发展意义重大。文章采用"自下而上"法,估算了1991~2010年中国旅游业的CO2排放量,并运用脱钩理论、ADF单位根检验、协整分析以及Granger因果关系检验,辨识和分析了中国旅游经济增长与碳排放之间的耦合关系。实证研究结果表明,在研究样本区间内,中国旅游经济增长与CO2排放量除2003年为未脱钩以外,其余年份均处于相对脱钩状态;旅游经济增长与碳排放之间存在长期的协整关系;旅游经济增长构成CO2排放的Granger原因不显著,而CO2排放构成旅游经济增长的Granger原因较为显著,即存在从CO2排放到旅游经济增长的单向Granger因果关系。基于上述结论,提出相关政策建议。

Linking between Carbon Dioxide Emission and Tourism Economic Growth in China

Climate change is one of the most important global environmental problems facing the world today. A recent research conducted by UNWTO shows that the carbon dioxide emission of tourism accounts for 4. 9% of the total man-made carbon dioxide emission, whose effect is equal to 14% of the global greenhouse gases; and the tourism carbon dioxide emission is increasing annually with an impressive growth rate at 2.5% on average before 2035. Under the grim background of tourism energy conservation and carbon emission reduction, it is of great importance to find out the relationship between tourism economic growth and carbon dioxide emission. By using the bottom-up approach, this paper estimates carbon dioxide emission of tourism industry and its subsectors in China during the period of 1991-2010. Additionally, it uses the decoupling theory, ADF unit root test, co-integration theory and Granger causality test to identify and analyze the link between economic growth of tourism and carbon dioxide emission. The results show that the tourism carbon dioxide emission in China＇ s tourism industry keeps growing during 1991-2010 as a whole. Compared with 1991, the carbon dioxide emission of tourism in 2010 has increased by 484. 47%. Tourism transportation, whose proportion maintains at 73%-79% in the past 20 years, is the main subsector of tourism carbon dioxide emission. The carbon dioxide emission of tourism accommodation and tourism activities presents an overall rising trend, and their average yearly proportions are 23.65% and 1.80%, respectively. Decoupling analysis reveals that only in the year 2003 when non-decoupling happened between tourism economic growth and carbon dioxide emission, and in the otherl 8 years, relative decoupling usually happened. The average decoupling index between tourism economic growth and carbon dioxide emission per year is only 0. 496, which indicates that the overall level of decoupling is relatively low, and that there is still a significant gap with the goal of achieving the absolute decoupling for low-carbon tourism development. ADF unit root test verifies that the first-order difference sequence of InS and InC are both stationary processes, and there exits a long-term co-integration relationship between tourism economic growth and carbon dioxide emission over the study period. Granger causality test proves that tourism economic growth is not the Granger causality of carbon dioxide emission, or carbon dioxide emission. The Granger Causality exists only one-way, from the energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission to tourism economic growth, and not vice versa. Based on the above findings, we suggest that the energy conservation and emission reduction of China＇ s tourism industry should focus on tourism transportation; however, other subsectors of tourism accommodation and tourist activities should not be overlooked. Meanwhile, the decoupling index can be adopted to monitor the dynamic relationship between tourism economic growth and carbon dioxide emission so as to keep reasonable control on the total energy consumption. Moreover, advocating low- carbon forms of tourism, promoting clean energy use and accordingly transforming the existing resources dependence mode of tourism economic development are the main points in the long run.