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Received Oct 16, 2017; Revised Feb 1, 2018; Accepted Feb 18, 2018
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1. Introduction
As one of the largest economic sectors in the world, the tourism industry plays an important role in creating jobs, driving exports, and generating prosperity across the world. According to the WTTC’s report, the total contribution of travel and tourism to the global economy was USD7.61 trillion in 2016, rising to a total of 10.2% of the world’s GDP. The travel and tourism sector supported 284 million people in employment, equivalent to 1 in 11 jobs on the planet [1]. Compared with other industries, such as metal products manufacturing, chemical industry, power supply, and transportation industries, the tourism industry has less energy consumption and pollution emissions. The direct CO2 emissions and ecological multipliers from the tourism industry ranked the sixteenth and eleventh in the 23 industrial sectors in 2007 in China, respectively [2, 3]. However, this does not mean that the tourism industry is a “zero emission” or “green” industry. A research from the World Tourism Organization reported that global CO2 emissions from the tourism industry made up about 4.9 percent of the total global greenhouse gas emissions in 2005 [4], which were mainly originated from tourism transportation (accounting for about 75% of total tourism CO2 emissions) [5, 6], accommodation and catering (approximately 21%) [7, 8], and tourist activities (approximately 4%) [9–11].
In China, the tourism industry has gained high-speed and unprecedented development since the reform and opening up. Through thirty years of development, China’s tourism revenue has jumped to the second place in the world in 2015. China has become the world’s largest consumer of outbound tourism for many years and contributes more than 13% to the global tourism revenue. The statistics from China Tourism Academy indicated that, during the year 2016, the number of domestic and inbound tourists in China reached 4.58 billion person-times, and the total domestic and international income from the tourism industry approached CNY4.69 trillion, accounting for 6.3% of the country’s GDP [12]. The remarkable development of China’s tourism industry has been accompanied...
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