TY - JOUR
T1 - Eco-efficiency and its determinants at a tourism destination
T2 - A case study of Huangshan National Park, China
AU - Peng, Hongsong
AU - Zhang, Jinhe
AU - Lu, Lin
AU - Tang, Guorong
AU - Yan, Bingjin
AU - Xiao, Xiao
AU - Han, Ya
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41271161, No. 40971301, No. 41230631) for the undertaking of this research. The authors would like to express their gratitude to the three anonymous reviewers giving critical comments and suggestions to the original version of this paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd
Copyright:
Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2017/6/1
Y1 - 2017/6/1
N2 - This study creates a comprehensive evaluation index system, including undesirable outputs and a Slacks-Based Measure-Data Envelopment Analysis model, to analyse the characteristics and evolution of eco-efficiency at an individual tourism destination. This study also empirically identifies the determinants of eco-efficiency. Huangshan National Park, one of the most iconic and highly visited national parks in China, was chosen as the study site. The study results indicate that eco-efficiency has improved continuously. Pure technical efficiency is higher than scale efficiency, while eco-efficiency is more relevant to scale efficiency than to pure technical efficiency. The evolution of eco-efficiency undergoes four stages: an initial inefficient stage, a rapid growth stage, a mature efficient stage and a downside risk stage. Moreover, tourism development, industrial structure and technical level have significantly positive impacts on eco-efficiency, but investment level displays the opposite trend. Environmental regulation emphasizing waste control does not effectively promote eco-efficiency. Finally, theoretical and practical contributions of the findings are discussed in the context of eco-efficiency at a tourism destination. For instance, an eco-efficiency analysis of a destination should treat the tourism destination as a macro-scale system with complex evolutionary rules and should combine this perspective with theory, such as the tourist area cycle of evolution proposed by Butler in 1980.
AB - This study creates a comprehensive evaluation index system, including undesirable outputs and a Slacks-Based Measure-Data Envelopment Analysis model, to analyse the characteristics and evolution of eco-efficiency at an individual tourism destination. This study also empirically identifies the determinants of eco-efficiency. Huangshan National Park, one of the most iconic and highly visited national parks in China, was chosen as the study site. The study results indicate that eco-efficiency has improved continuously. Pure technical efficiency is higher than scale efficiency, while eco-efficiency is more relevant to scale efficiency than to pure technical efficiency. The evolution of eco-efficiency undergoes four stages: an initial inefficient stage, a rapid growth stage, a mature efficient stage and a downside risk stage. Moreover, tourism development, industrial structure and technical level have significantly positive impacts on eco-efficiency, but investment level displays the opposite trend. Environmental regulation emphasizing waste control does not effectively promote eco-efficiency. Finally, theoretical and practical contributions of the findings are discussed in the context of eco-efficiency at a tourism destination. For instance, an eco-efficiency analysis of a destination should treat the tourism destination as a macro-scale system with complex evolutionary rules and should combine this perspective with theory, such as the tourist area cycle of evolution proposed by Butler in 1980.
KW - Huangshan National Park
KW - Time series SBM-DEA model
KW - Tobit regression analysis
KW - Tourism destination
KW - Tourism eco-efficiency
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U2 - 10.1016/j.tourman.2016.12.005
DO - 10.1016/j.tourman.2016.12.005
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85003905076
SN - 0261-5177
VL - 60
SP - 201
EP - 211
JO - Tourism Management
JF - Tourism Management
ER -