Comparative Review of Research on Environmental Impacts of Tourism in English and Chinese Literatures

China is experiencing an increasingly high level of recreation and tourism use of its environments but only limited studies of the environmental impacts of tourism have been published. This paper is based upon a collection of research papers on the environmental impacts of tourism in English and Chinese, especially research on carrying capacity and the physical impacts of tourism. The paper compares the characteristics of research in English and Chinese literatures. It shows that China lags behind the western world in this research field. Chinese researchers need to: (1) be more critical of the feasibility of carrying capacity applications; (2) introduce new technologies in their research on vegetation and soil; (3) know more about the buffering effects of different kinds of tourist trails such as boardwalks, concrete trails, cross-tie trails, cobble trails and so on; (4) try to shed light on possible positive impacts of tourism; and (5) pay more attention to the protection of environmentally sensitive areas. The paper also discusses the dilemmas of research on carrying capacity and environmental impacts.