Effect of tourism development on urban air pollution in China: The moderating role of tourism infrastructure

Tourism development has become increasingly important in supporting China’s sustained economic growth. However, unreasonable tourism exploitation and large energy consumption have brought severe challenges to China’s urban environment, particularly for air pollution problems which constrains improvements in sustainable economic development and social welfare. This paper is aim to empirically investigate the direct and spatial spillover effects of tourism development on air pollution in China using panel data from 285 prefecture-level cities from 2005 to 2017. After spatial correlation statistical analysis, this research employs a generalized nested spatial econometric model (GNS) to conduct empirical estimations. The results demonstrate that the tourism development’s direct effect on PM2.5 concentrations takes on an inverted U-shaped relationship. In contrast, the indirect effect of tourism development on PM2.5 demonstrates reveals a U-shaped relationship. For industrial SO2 emissions, both the direct and indirect effect of tourism development have inverted U-shape relationships. We find that urban high-speed rail construction and tourism resources play an important moderating role in the relationships between tourism development and urban industrial SO2 emissions. These results confirm a tourism-environment Kuznets curve in the context of China, with significant spatial spillover effects from tourism development on air pollution. We conducted two robustness tests and then offer policy suggestions to reduce air pollution. •Estimates the spatial spillover effect of tourism development on urban air pollution in China.•The method of generalized nested spatial econometric model is employed.•The nonlinear relationship between tourism development and urban air pollution in China is revealed.•The moderating effect of tourism infrastructure (High-speed rail and 5-A tourist scenic spots) is analyzed.•Empirical results indicting that tourism air pollution should be taken seriously.