An asymmetric examination of the environmental effect of tourism in China

This article employs the non-linear autoregressive distributed lag model in analysing the environmental impact of tourism in China from 2002Q1 to 2018Q4, while controlling for non-renewable energy consumption, trade openness, urbanisation, per capita GDP and its quadratic form. The approach permits the simultaneous testing of non-linearities in the short and long run. This is achieved through negative and positive partial sum decompositions of the regressor of interest. Findings from the article indicate the following: (i) long-run co-movements exist between tourism activities and environmental performance in China, (ii) tourism activities considerably damage the environment in China, (iii) the environment responds to tourism in an asymmetric manner, such that the damage caused by increasing tourism is smaller than the positive environmental effect of decline in tourism. Thus, less tourism protects the environment faster than more tourism damages it. A supplementary non-parametric test for non-linear causality was also performed. The result further provides strong evidence of a non-linear feedback causality between tourism activities and environmental performance in China in the first moment (mean) and second moment (variance). Tourism (environmental performance) is thus a significant predictor of China’s environmental performance (tourism).