Decomposition of tourism greenhouse gas emissions: Revealing the dynamics between tourism economic growth, technological efficiency, and carbon emissions

This study proposes an analytical framework for decomposing the national tourism carbon footprint and carbon efficiency to identify the dynamics between economic growth, technological efficiency, and environmental externality. Using the environmentally extended input-output model and decomposition methods, tourism carbon changes are decomposed into the economic factors of total consumption and purchasing patterns, and the production factors of industry input structure and technological improvement. This macro-level approach provides a basis for 1) assessing whether total tourism emissions increase in direct proportion to tourism consumption over time, 2) tracing the underlying determinants and their effects on tourism emissions expansion and eco-efficiency performance, and 3) comparing the carbon performance of the tourism industry against the national average. Based on the example of Taiwan, the results demonstrate that we are a long way from the goal of using the technological efficiencies of production to offset tourism-based carbon emissions.