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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Does the Digital Economy Promote Tourism
Eco-Efficiency? – An Empirical Study
Based on Chinese Cities
1
College of Tourism, Hunan Normal University, Changsha 410081, PR China
2
College of Tourism and Service Management, Nankai University, Tianjin 300350, PR China
Submission date: 2023-12-19
Final revision date: 2024-04-01
Acceptance date: 2024-04-18
Online publication date: 2024-10-07
Publication date: 2025-01-28
Corresponding author
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2025;34(3):2063-2079
KEYWORDS
TOPICS
ABSTRACT
With the rapid development of the digital economy, new concepts, forms, and paradigms are being
comprehensively integrated into the entire process of constructing human ecological civilizations, and
the development of tourism eco-efficiency has ushered in many new opportunities. This paper constructs
a mechanistic framework for calculating the impact of the digital economy on tourism eco-efficiency
and pushes for empirical research. This paper uses panel data from 275 prefecture-level and above cities
in China from 2011 to 2019 as a sample and the benchmark regression model, mediating effect model,
and spatial Durbin model to empirically analyze the effect of the digital economy on tourism ecoefficiency
after measuring the digital economy and tourism eco-efficiency indexes. The results show that
the digital economy has a significant positive effect on tourism eco-efficiency that is more significant
in central cities, northeastern cities, and nonurban clusters. Second, the digital economy positively
affects tourism eco-efficiency by exerting technological effects and industrial structural adjustments.
In addition, the digital economy has a significant positive spatial spillover effect on tourism
eco-efficiency. Finally, based on the above findings, this paper proposes specific recommendations
for improving tourism eco-efficiency via the digital economy.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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