Spatial-temporal Evolution and Its Influencing Factors of Tourism Eco-efficiency in China

Eco-efficiency is an invaluable indicator for the measurement of the relationship between production activities and environmental depletion.This study measures the tourism eco-efficiency of 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2020 based on the super-efficiency SBM model,and explores its spatial-temporal evolution characteristics using the kernel density function,standard deviation ellipse,and center of gravity model.Then,the influencing factors of the tourism eco-efficiency in China are analyzed by Tobit regression model.The results show that the tourism eco-efficiency of China is generally fluctuating upwards,but has not yet reached the maximum production possibility frontier.The kernel density curve shows a unimodal-bimodal-unimodal pattern,while the inter-provincial differences have been decreasing and becoming more balanced.The center of gravity of tourism eco-efficiency is located at the junction of Henan and Hubei province and generally moves to the south(slightly to the southwest).Meanwhile,it is revealed that the level of economic development and the tourism eco-efficiency has a significant inverted U-shaped relationship.The level of economic openness,traffic conditions,and tourism eco-efficiency is positively correlated.The environmental regulations and industrial structure have a negative but limited impact on tourism eco-efficiency.Finally,recommendations and suggestions for policy formulation to promote quality and sustainable development of the tourism industry are put forward,such as increasing investment in ecological protection and governance in tourism development,improving capacity-building in allocating green and low-carbon technologies and resources,strengthening tourism infrastructure construction,and enhancing environmental governance systems and mechanisms.

How can social enterprises contribute to sustainable pro-poor tourism development?

"Tourism-Assisting the Poor" has been an important approach in anti-poverty strategy. Studies suggest that the conventional tourism model fails to generate benefits for the poor and to some extent enlarges the gap between the poor and the rich, which subsequently causes more social problems. Pro-poor tourism(PPT) is regarded as an alternative model. Precisely targeted assistance to the poor is the key to initiating this model, while the institutional change and implementation mechanism are essential to run it successfully and sustainably. Social entrepreneurship focusing on social values while adopting modern business philosophy has been introduced recently as an instrument in helping disadvantage population. This paper takes the Smangus community in Taiwan as an example to explore the role of social entrepreneurship and social enterprises in PPT development. It also discusses their implications for the anti-poverty practice in other regions including ethnic areas in China.

Comparative Research of Residents' Effect Perception and Participation Capacity and Willingness on Pro-poor Tourism

In this article,comparative research on residents' effect perception,participation capacity and willingness on Pro-poor Tourism( PPT) is given based on the questionnaire carried out in Wulong County and Fengjie County in Three Gorges Area,Chongqing,China. Some technologies,such as SPSS 13. 0,ANOVA and T-test are applied to analyze the data and results show Wulong residents' perception behavior is better than that of Fengjie residents. Moreover,the residents with different demographic characteristics have different participation behavior.Finally,multiple regression analysis is applied to identify the key factors influencing residents' perception behavior,that is participation willingness and positive economic effect perception,positive social and cultural effect perception and participation capacity.

Pro-Poor Tourism: Critical Perspective and Implications for Future Research

Tourism is viewed as a medium to reduce poverty.The pro-poor tourism (PPT) approach has therefore emerged as the medium for tourism development to influence poverty reduction. The approach stresses on tourism development in ways to accrue net benefits to the poor through diverse strategies including those that generate employmentopportunities, infrastructural development, and skills enhancement of locals in entrepreneurial activities. Also stressed is the inclusion of the poor in tourism decision making. While the pro-poor tourism approach has gained scholarly attention, much of these studies turned to assessed PPT impactson poverty reduction in communities with limited discussion on products development. Yet, product development is considered to be the means by which tourism can contribute to local economic development and by extension, poverty reduction. This paper examines the PPT concept and argues for PPT works to examine how products are develop to influence poverty reduction with recommendations of making PPT work for the poor. This follows with implications for further research works on PPT and its development.

Socio-Economic Impacts of Tourism in Axum Town, Tigray Regional State, Ethiopia

This research paper tries to assess the multi-dimensional impacts of tourism in Axum which increases from time to time as the tourist flow increases, identifying problems which hindered the tourism environment and examining the magnitude of the multi-dimensional linkages between tourism and the local community. The main objective of the study is to understand the socio-economic impact of tourism. To achieve the objective, the researcher designed a proper methodology which includes both primary and secondary data. The primary data were collected through questionnaires, key informant interview （KII）, focus group discussion （FGD）, and observations from 208 total respondents. To support the primary data, secondary data were also collected and were all analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. As the finding indicates, tourism has a multi-dimensional impact, economically, socio-culturally, environmentally as well as politically. For instance, the positive contributions of tourism are： source of employment for 2,389 people and the number of employed workers in business household heads （HHs） also increases by 11% every year, similarly the income of business HHs also increases by 8.8% every year as the tourist flow increases. Similar to economic impact, the sector has also socio-cultural, environmental, and political importance such as infrastructural improvement, preservation of attractions, creating environmental awareness, and encouraging power and librating effect of women which are few among the positive impacts. On the contrary, the sector has also negative impacts in terms of motivating begging and dependence, seasonal unemployment and unstable income, aggravating prostitution and student dropout, loss of cultural identity, environmental and heritage degradation and taking of intelligence, which are few among the negative one but the positive impact of tourism outweighs the negative one. Even though the sector has its own contribdtion in the town in a multi-dimensional way, the town cannot gain from the sector as its potential of attraction endowment due to poor infrastructure and accommodation provision, social-related problems such as begging, theft and high entrance fee of attractions, inadequacy in quality and quantity service pervasion, lack of awareness and promotional works, lack of coordination as well as geographical location which are among the few factors for the underdevelopment of the sector in the town. Finally, this paper recommended that participation and coordination of all concerned bodies and stakeholders should be very imperative in supporting and expansion of infrastructures which helps to increase tourist flow and income earned from it and its consequences to socio-economic benefits by giving higher attention to minimizing the negative impacts.