importance of tourism infrastructure development

If you build it, they will come: Why infrastructure is crucial to tourism growth and competitiveness

Tourism is expanding globally, but can infrastructure keep up?

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With international tourist arrivals reaching 1.4 billion in 2018— two years ahead of initial projections —the travel and tourism industry will continue to drive global connectivity. The World Economic Forum’s 2019 Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report shows this growth is backed by improving global travel and tourism competitiveness, which stems, in part, from growing aviation capacity, increased international openness, and declining travel costs.

However, the report also shows the need for developing infrastructure, which may not be able to keep up with the additional 400 million arrivals forecasted by 2030 . While infrastructure challenges differ for various regions and levels of economic development, failure to address these challenges may reduce competitiveness, hurting the travel and tourism industry.

Infrastructure—including air, ground, port, and tourism services like hotel rooms and car rental services—plays a vital role in travel and tourism competitiveness, serving as the arteries of the industry. And from a global perspective, infrastructure continues to improve.

Since 2017 , air transport infrastructure is one of the most improved components in the index, with strong growth in scores across most regions, subregions and economic development levels. However, much of this performance has come from growing route capacity and the number of carriers operating. Perceptions of the quality of air transport infrastructure, while better since 2017, have grown more slowly, while most recent airport density figures indicate slightly reduced airport access than before. These results potentially indicate that travel demand and airline growth may eventually outstrip hard-infrastructure capacity. By 2037, the International Air Transport Association projects the number of air passengers could double to 8.2 billion.

The report also shows that global perspectives on the quality and efficiency of ground transport infrastructure and services have remained, on average, near stagnant. Given the projected growth in travel as well as the need for infrastructure to accommodate more tourism-related needs, significant work will be required to bridge multi-trillion dollar investment deficits for airports, ports, rail and roads.

The results could be used to assess the infrastructure readiness of economies by looking at their scores for infrastructure and tourist arrival trends. The figure above compares country subregion and income-level groupings against their growth in international tourist arrivals from 2013 to 2017. It is clear tourism is growing in most subregions and among all income groups, with many above the global rate of growth.

Most of the regions on the right side of the figure above are relatively advanced countries with well-developed infrastructure. As a result, they may have more capacity to handle tourism growth. Moreover, it is also apparent that, despite market maturity, such countries are still welcoming more and more tourists each year. As the figure shows, high-income economies had the largest increase in arrivals, growing faster than the global rate. But while these economies have strong infrastructure, their share of arrivals and growth rates reveals the pressure on their infrastructure.

High-income economies analysed accounted for nearly 65% of arrivals in 2017 and 74.3% of growth in arrivals between 2013 and 2017. Subregions like Southern Europe and Eastern Asia-Pacific have seen rapid growth in arrivals, putting pressure on their more developed infrastructure. Arrivals in Western European countries, which on average, have the best infrastructure in the ranking, might seem to be below the global rate of growth but accounted for nearly one-fifth of global arrivals in 2017, and nearly 14% of the increase globally since 2013.

Northern Europe has experienced some of the fastest growth in arrivals in recent years and had the third-largest improvement in scores for air transport infrastructure since 2017. But its well-developed infrastructure may still come under strain, with this year’s report showing the region’s growth in ground, port and tourist infrastructure was below the global average.

South-East Asia has also experienced strong growth in tourism in recent years, but its near-average infrastructure scores indicate it might lack the capacity to continue accepting tourists. Countries like Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines have recently seen a surge in tourism, but, despite improvement in scores, all rank below average for infrastructure.

The regions on the left side of the figure mostly consist of lower-income countries. While these economies do not account for the same volume of arrivals as the more developed regions and countries, they still face capacity issues because their infrastructure is less developed. Nevertheless, due to higher price competitiveness, economic growth and declining travel barriers, many of these countries have also seen some of the biggest percentage increases in arrivals.

Countries in subregions on the upper left-hand quadrant may be at greatest risk of strain due to rapid visitor growth and underdeveloped infrastructure. In particular, this is an issue for South Asia, Western Africa, South America and the Balkans and Eastern Europe. On the other hand, nations on the bottom left-hand quadrant have less tourism growth, though this might be due to their limited infrastructure capacity, among other factors.

How countries deal with their infrastructure will be a crucial factor in their long-term travel and tourism competitiveness. Even nations with developed airports and roads may face strain under growing utilization, which may lead to issues related to quality.

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However, it is also important to note competitiveness relies on far more than just infrastructure. Emerging economies also have more work to do when it comes to improving business environments, addressing safety and security concerns and reducing travel barriers. Natural assets, which attract a significant number of visitors internationally, also need to be better protected. For example, South America and South-East Asia outscore the global average for natural resources by about 27% and 11%, respectively, but score below average for environmental sustainability. Consequently, many countries in these subregions may be at risk of damaging the very assets that make great travel destinations.

In some cases, improvements in one area of competitiveness without progress elsewhere can also lead to issues. For instance, Iceland’s improvement in air connectivity and surging visitor volumes was not matched by price competitiveness and overall tourism capacity, potentially explaining its recent slowdown .

Handling all these issues cannot be the purview of only travel and tourism stakeholders. Improving competitiveness, especially as it relates to travel and tourism, requires a holistic, multistakeholder approach.

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Tourism & Hospitality Management
2 Minutes Read

Importance of Tourism Infrastructure Development

Visits by a tourist create additional development of the place such as parks, gardens, and museums. Additional facilities include roads, water systems, public toilets, signage, etc. Because all of these infrastructure developments are important for the tourism sector. While there are many programs organized by Government at the top level it is the governance by the local government that supports the system uniform.

Every development with regard to a place is dependent on the need of the visitors. Visitors use a variety of facilities depending upon the priority. By proper analysis of the opportunities plan, necessary facilities that need to be implemented can be identified. Facilities generally include,

Transportation Facilities
Healthcare Facilities
Water Management Facilities
Waste Management Facilities
Recreational Facilities

Accessibility to the above facilities is the important thing in creating an impression among tourists. The satisfaction of the tour program is measured by these facilities.

The population of a place and the tourists visiting that place can have a significant effect on infrastructure development (Tourism development) . Foreseeing the demand that may occur during seasons is crucial in determining how much money should be invested in developing the destination.

The development of a place for tourism can also help in boosting the economy of the locality. Even though this kind of development is not noticed easily the factor of contribution by tourism sector on the economy is higher. A well-developed infrastructure not only enhances the overall tourism experience but also contributes significantly to the economic, social, and environmental aspects of a destination.

For interested people, Westford University College provided a Diploma program in Tourism Management . This program helps students to gain an in-depth understanding of managing projects in the industry and build their strategic planning capabilities internationally.

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

How does new infrastructure impact the competitiveness of the tourism industry?——Evidence from China

Roles Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Institute of Management, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Shanghai, China

Roles Writing – original draft

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Institute of Geography, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

Roles Methodology

Roles Data curation

Guodong Yan,
Lin Zou,
Yunan Liu,

Published: December 1, 2022
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278274
Reader Comments

Infrastructure construction related to the new generation of information technology and 5G technology is an important measure taken by the Chinese government to promote regional economic development. Large-scale infrastructure investment is being carried out simultaneously in China’s core and peripheral regions. The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a severe blow to China’s tourism industry, and the application of new technologies seems to blur the spatial boundaries of the tourism industry. Therefore, it is debatable whether the zealous development of large investment projects can really improve the competitiveness of the regional tourism industry. This paper discusses this topical issue by empirically analyzing data from 31 Chinese provinces and cities from 2008–2019 and draws the following conclusions (1) The continuous expansion of new infrastructure investment in China indeed has a positive effect on improving China’s overall tourism competitiveness. However, the inverted U-shaped relationship between the two shows that China should not blindly expand the scale of infrastructure construction and make appropriate investment according to the regional industrial development level. (2) Although convergent infrastructure plays an important role in regional industrial competitiveness, the marginal effect has begun to weaken, so the problem of scale inefficiency needs to be addressed. In contrast, the input of innovation infrastructure is insufficient to enhance industrial competitiveness and can be moderately increased to achieve better results. (3) China’s core economic areas have a good driving effect on new infrastructure investment, but the original technological innovation and transformation-type facilities are still the key to limiting the improvement of industrial competitiveness. Peripheral areas are more passive recipients with strong demand. Therefore, investment in various types of infrastructure can drive regional development.

Citation: Yan G, Zou L, Liu Y, Ji R (2022) How does new infrastructure impact the competitiveness of the tourism industry?——Evidence from China. PLoS ONE 17(12): e0278274. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278274

Editor: Hironori Kato, The University of Tokyo, JAPAN

Received: June 7, 2022; Accepted: November 13, 2022; Published: December 1, 2022

Copyright: © 2022 Yan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: This work was supported by National Social Science Foundation of China (17BJY148); National Natural Science Foundation of China (42101175); China Scholarship Council Postdoctoral Foundation (Grant: 202008310025).

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

1 Introduction

Since 2018, China has defined the construction of 5G, artificial intelligence, industrial internet and the internet of things as "new infrastructure construction". New infrastructure construction focuses on the industrial internet to provide infrastructure for the digital transformation of industry, with investment in fixed assets, advanced infrastructure and digital platforms. The development of the new infrastructure has accelerated the deployment and application of cutting-edge digital technologies in China.

In 2020, China has defined that the scope of new infrastructure construction mainly includes information infrastructure, converged infrastructure and innovation infrastructure. Information infrastructure refers to the infrastructure developed and created based on the new generation of information technology, such as the infrastructure of communication networks represented by 5G, the Internet of Things, the Industrial Internet and satellite Internet, the infrastructure of new technologies represented by artificial intelligence, cloud computing and blockchain, and the infrastructure represented by data centers and intelligent data centers. Converged infrastructure refers to the transformed and modernized infrastructure through the deep application of internet, Big Data, artificial intelligence and other technologies, such as smart transport infrastructure and smart energy infrastructure. Innovation infrastructure refers to the non-profit infrastructure supporting scientific research, technological development and product research and development, such as large-scale science and technology infrastructure, science and education infrastructure and industrial technology innovation infrastructure.

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has brought major changes to the tourism industry. The traditional tourism industry, which used to rely on crowd consumption, has almost come to a standstill, while emerging industries such as cloud display art and cloud tourism based on digital technology are developing rapidly in China.For the digital tourism industry, building new infrastructures does not only mean satisfying the growing demand for information processing, information transmission and storage capacity. The digital tourism industry relies on digital technology for the production, distribution and management of tourism-related content, providing digital cultural services with smarter connectivity, deeper interaction, more comprehensive integration and higher quality content, creating a variety of new platforms and formats for the digital tourism industry and opening up new development opportunities. China’s tourism industry is showing an increasingly clear digital development trend. The construction of new infrastructure has become the key promoter of the transformation and development of the digital tourism industry, which plays a key role in improving the competitiveness of regional and national tourism in the Special Period. Therefore, from the perspective of the joint development of new infrastructure construction and the tourism industry, this paper analyses the general issue of how new infrastructure construction affects the competitiveness of China’s tourism industry, and specifically attempts to discuss the diversity of the role of new infrastructure development on tourism in terms of the types of facilities, regional differences and investment differences.

This paper is organized as follows. The next section reviews the relevant literature and proposes the analytical framework for the relationship between the construction of new infrastructure and the competitiveness of the tourism industry; the third section describes the data and methodology of our study; the fourth and fifth sections discuss the impact of new infrastructure on the tourism industry in China; finally, the last section provides some concluding remarks.

2 Analytical frameworks

New infrastructure construction has become a necessary condition for China’s economic development and has a catalytic effect on the high-quality development of the regional economy and the transformation and upgrading of the industrial structure [ 1 , 2 ]. The construction of new infrastructure is closely related to tourism development and can improve the quality of tourism development [ 3 – 5 ]. Tourism is associated with multiple industries and has strong industrial penetration [ 6 , 7 ]. Digitization and connectivity of new infrastructure reduces the negative benefits of travel time and provides potential economic benefits based on improving the value of travel time [ 8 ]. The construction of new infrastructure enables investment of China’s public finance, government debt funds, private investment and other funds into the internal economic circulation system [ 9 ], which plays a role in improving the income level and tourism consumption capacity of urban and rural residents and boosts demand in China’s domestic tourism market. It helps China to mitigate the economic impact of the COVID -19 pandemic to a certain extent, which is the internal economic cycle that the Chinese government has emphasized. It is worth highlighting that the Chinese government’s new infrastructure construction policy stimulates private investment in the tourism industry, creating economic spillover effects [ 10 ]. This leads to an increase in private investment and consumption, much of which comes from foreign FDI investment, linking the two-way interaction between China’s internal and international capital [ 5 ].

Infrastructure investment can promote economic cycles and growth and is subject to the law of diminishing marginal returns [ 11 ]. The marginal benefit of improving the competitiveness of the tourism industry gradually increases as the scale of investment in new infrastructure increases, but above a certain level of investment, the marginal benefit of the competitiveness of the tourism industry decreases. This is because too much investment in tourism industry infrastructure leads to conflicts in capital utilization and neglect of other development needs of the tourism industry. Therefore, the level of investment also has an impact on the competitiveness of the tourism industry.

Although infrastructure encompasses the key fields of the scientific and technological revolution and industrial change, different categories of infrastructure have different emphases in the tourism industry chain, and there are differences in how the tourism industry uses and depends on different types of new infrastructure. Information infrastructure is mainly based on a cloud computing platform to support the construction of an urban tourism database, accurately analyses tourists’ preferences, realize personalized recommendations for tourism strategies, and innovate the market segmentation and positioning of the tourism industry [ 12 ]. Convergent infrastructures focus on implementing digital transformation, such as improving tourism accessibility through smart transport infrastructures that help tourists plan the shortest travel time. Innovation infrastructure helps to integrate knowledge elements into the development and construction of tourism destinations. Due to the different ways in which new infrastructure is built, there are large differences in their impact on improving the competitiveness of the tourism industry.

The development of tourism based on information and network infrastructures can better reflect the diversity of regional conditions, and the construction of new infrastructures makes knowledge and information the main production factors of the digital economy [ 13 ]. With the development of the digital economy, tourism culture, landscape, folk customs and other local cultures become more diverse and can be more easily integrated through digitalization. With the help of smart infrastructure of destinations, digital tourist attractions can be gradually built, and the temporal and spatial boundaries of tourism culture production can be broken. There is obvious heterogeneity in the role of new infrastructure construction, especially in terms of heterogeneity in the types of infrastructure construction and regional contextual differences [ 14 ].

The regional conditions in East China, Central China and West China are very different, and the regional tourism industry is developed by different economic policies, economic levels and urban cultures in each region. There are also differences in the stage of investment, scale and impact of new infrastructure construction, leading to large differences in the dependence of the regional tourism industry on new infrastructure. For example, the five major urban agglomerations in the coastal areas of East China are the core areas of economic and social development, with advantages in policy implementation, rich tourism resources and perfect tourism infrastructure [ 15 ]; the new infrastructure can quickly interact with the development of the tourism industry. There is still a gap between investment in new urban infrastructure in central China and eastern China, as central China does not have the obvious relative advantage of political support. Western China is the peripheral area of China’s economic development. Although it is considered by planners as the most important planning area for tourism, it has weak capacity to distribute resources to the market. Due to institutional backwardness, western China has an urgent need for new infrastructure. Therefore, the impact of new infrastructure on the competitiveness of the tourism industry varies greatly due to different regional conditions. There are studies on the relationship between new infrastructure development and tourism development in China, but are the massive government investments in new infrastructure development in China really able to increase the competitiveness of the industry? Does blind expansion lead to scale economies, or how does it play in different regions? To answer this general question, a research framework for new infrastructure and the tourism industry was established ( Fig 1 ).

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278274.g001

3 Methodology

3.1 data collection.

The panel data of tourism industry and new infrastructure investment from 2008 to 2019 of 31 provinces and municipalities in China (excluding Taiwan, Macau and Hong Kong) were selected as the research dataset for this paper. Data such as New infrastructure construction, Market potential, Destination accessibility, Sustainable development, Health care construction, Accommodation and catering performance, Culture construction are from China Statistical Yearbook (2009–2020) and Statistical Bulletin of National Economic and Social Development (2009–2020). Data of market performance is from China Tourism Statistical Yearbook (2009–2020). The control variables are industrial structure, population size and degree of openness. The proportion of tertiary industry represents the rationalization of the industrial structure; we use the proportion of tertiary industry in the total value of all industries to measure the regional industrial structure; Since population affects regional tourism consumption and population size has a positive effect on local tourism consumption and tourist flows [ 16 , 17 ], regional population is selected to measure population size; regional openness is of great importance in attracting international tourists and developing the international market; import and export status of each region is used to measure the openness of each region. Data of control variable is also from China Statistical Yearbook (2009–2020).

3.1.1 Infrastructure indicators.

According to existing research and the Chinese government’s policy definition [ 18 ], new infrastructure consists of information infrastructure (Infra1), convergent infrastructure (Infra2), innovation infrastructure (Infra3) and its total infrastructure ( Table 1 ), each represented by the level of investment capital of the corresponding infrastructure sectors from 2008 to 2019.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278274.t001

Referring to the existing researches, the competitiveness index of the tourism industry mainly includes two parts: the development potential and the performance of the tourism industry [ 3 , 19 , 20 ] ( Table 2 ). Referring to the 2021 travel and tourism development index and existing researches, this paper constructs the competitiveness index of the tourism industry. The factor analysis method was used to calculate the tourism industry competitiveness of 31 provinces and cities in China from 2008 to 2019.According to the Travel and Tourism Development Index (TTDI) and existing research [ 19 , 21 – 24 ], the development potential of the tourism industry mainly includes market potential, destination accessibility, sustainable development, and health care construction. Tourism industry performance mainly includes market performance, accommodation and catering performance, culture construction, etc.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278274.t002

On the one hand, for indicator of tourism industry potential, tourism consumption has a long-term equilibrium relationship with residents’ income or consumption level, these factors have a certain role in promoting tourism consumption, which can represent regional market potential [ 25 ]. To realize the tourism market expansion, especially in central or western economic peripheral regions, a combination of tourism and postal service is one of the most important ways [ 26 ]. Travel destination accessibility is normally related to air transport, ground and port transport service capabilities, etc., which will influence traveler mobility and attraction accessibility [ 22 ]. Environmental sustainability is an important factor in the long-term profitability of national or regional tourism destinations [ 19 ]. Moreover, health care construction is an important condition to ensure travel safety, and China’s rapidly developing tourism industry urgently needs medical construction in high-level tourist destinations [ 21 ], which has been pronounced during the covid-19 pandemic. Based on the existing research, consider the particularity of China’s tourism industry, while ensuring the integrity of the data available. This research takes the income or consumption level of regional residents and regional post-service income as the main indicators of regional market potential. Passenger traffic volume of railways and highways, and the number of employees in railway, highway, aviation, and water transportation are considered the main indicators of regional transportation construction level. The sustainability of regional tourism is measured in terms of forest coverage rate, harmless treatment rate of domestic waste, oxygen demand in wastewater, ammonia nitrogen emission in wastewater, and sulfur dioxide emission. Indicators such as the number of health institutions, the number of health technicians per 1,000 people, and the number of hospital beds per 1,000 people are used to characterize health care construction.

On the other hand, for tourism industry performance, indicators related to domestic and foreign tourism revenue, and the number of inbound and domestic tourists can characterize the regional market performance. Tourist reception capacity, accommodation and catering-related consumption and infrastructure construction are the main indicators to measure the competitiveness of the industry. Tourist reception capacity, accommodation, catering-related consumption, and infrastructure construction level are the main aspects to measure the industry competitiveness, which are measured by indicators such as the number of accommodation and catering firms, the number of employed employees, and labor remuneration. Cultural tourism is an important part of international tourism consumption, which is usually measured by the number of libraries and museums, the number of audiences of performance groups, the number of cultural and entertainment employees, and labor remuneration [ 24 ].

Based on the regional statistical data of tourism in 31 provinces and cities in China from 2008 to 2019, the original data were tailed by 1%, and the data were normalized to eliminate the influence of extreme values. This study determines the weights through factor analysis, calculates the competitiveness of the tourism industry and provides a statistical description of the data ( Table 3 and S1 Appendix ).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278274.t003

3.2 Fixed effects regression model

In terms of data selection, panel data combines the advantages of time series and cross-section data. It has the advantages of controlling temporal and spatial heterogeneity, reducing multicollinearity and reducing data bias, and has been widely used in existing causal relationship studies [ 27 – 29 ].

Fixed effect model focuses on the change of a single object over time and can eliminate the interference of multiple fixed factors without considering the variation among different individuals. Random effect model can make better use of data information by weighted average of variation within and among individuals. However, due to the consideration of individual variation, it must be assumed that the residuals are not related to the independent variables, which is relatively inaccurate.

To clarify the model, the Hausmann test was performed in this research ( Table 4 ). In model1, the P value of the F test is 0, the null hypothesis is rejected at the 1% significance level, indicating that the fixed model is better than the mixed model; The P value of the LM test is 0 in model2, and the hypothesis of "there is no individual random effect" is rejected at the 1% significance level, indicating that the random effect model is better than the mixed model; Model 3 is the Hausman test result, p value = 0, the null hypothesis is strongly rejected, and the fixed effects model is considered significantly better than the random model, so here the fixed-effects model should be used.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278274.t004

Eq ( 2 ) verifies the differences of impact of different types of infrastructure on the competitiveness of tourism industry, where X*it denotes information infrastructure, converged infrastructure and innovation infrastructure respectively; Eq ( 3 ) verifies the effect differences in different regions, where dummy1 and dummy 2 are dummy variables which shall be 1 when the region is located in Central and West China or 01 when the region is not located in Central and West China; Eq ( 4 ) verifies the effect differences of different investment scales, where dummy 3 is a dummy variable which shall be 1 when the investment scale is greater than China’s average or 0 when not; the remaining variables have the same meaning as in Eq ( 1 ).

3.3 Regional context and infrastructure foundation

Since China unveiled its new infrastructure construction strategy in 2018, the amount of investment in new infrastructure has steadily increased. By February 2020, the Chinese government had issued RMB 231.9 billion worth of special bonds for new infrastructure-related sectors. Investment in new infrastructure construction accounts for about 20% to 25% of total infrastructure investment. In 2022, China will focus on building 425,000 5G base stations. Although the Chinese government is trying to increase investment in new infrastructure construction, according to the 2019 World Economic Forum statistics, China has an unbalanced ranking in the quality of global infrastructure construction, as the different types of infrastructure construction vary widely. Moreover, infrastructure investment in China varies greatly from region to region. In terms of communication infrastructure development, the penetration rate of mobile phones, fixed broadband and internet in East China in 2018 was 145%, 34.24% and 61.32% respectively, and 18 cities supported 5G network coverage; the penetration rate of mobile phones, fixed broadband and internet in Central China was 93.69%, 25.9% and 45.6% respectively, which is a big difference from East China, and only 6 cities supported 5G network coverage. The penetration rate of mobile phone, fixed broadband and internet in Western China was significantly lower than the Chinese average.

The regional differences in the competitiveness of the tourism industry show a trend of expansion from the core regions of East China to West China from 2008 to 2019. East China is the core region of economic development and has a more solid industrial economic base, better service facilities and higher consumption level of residents than the other regions of China. Therefore, the regional tourism industry demand is huge, the regional tourism base and demand are developed first, and undoubtedly have higher initial competitiveness than other regions. Yunnan and Sichuan in western China are rich in natural resources for tourism, but the initial competitiveness of the industry is not high due to the accessibility and regional socio-economic development level, suggesting low industrial competitiveness. With China’s industrial transfer and infrastructure development, the advantages of tourism resources in western China are gradually becoming apparent.

4.1 Impact of infrastructure on overall tourism competitiveness

According to the regression results ( Table 5 ), China’s investment in new infrastructure construction has a significant positive impact on improving regional competitiveness in tourism. In model 1, regional competitiveness in tourism increases by about 0.6642 per unit investment.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278274.t005

Adding control variables to model 1 to obtain model 2, the regression coefficient has decreased, but it still plays a positive role at the 1% significance level. In order to eliminate the influence of time and individual differences, this paper further adds time and individual fixed effects to Model 2 and obtains Model 3. The regional tourism competitiveness increased by about 0.1326 with the investment of new infrastructure units. Differences in variables such as industrial structure, population size, and openness, as well as time and individual fixed effects, explain the decline of the regression coefficient to a certain extent. Model 3 still shows the same positive trend under the full introduction of various conditions.

Model 4 introduces the quadratic term of new infrastructure investment into the regression equation. The results show that the effect of new infrastructure investment on increasing the competitiveness of the tourism industry is not linear but has an "inverted U-curve." That is, there is an inflection point between new infrastructure investment and the improvement of tourism industry competitiveness, which shows the law of diminishing marginal effect.

To a certain extent, this is related to the characteristics of the system of assessing local governments with GDP as the main indicator. Furthermore, local governments will encourage enterprises and institutions to participate in key new infrastructure projects by increasing local taxes and other means to achieve the goal of increasing GDP. This can lead to excessive infrastructure construction, overcapacity and industry inefficiency in some regions [ 32 , 33 ]. In addition, expanding infrastructure investment has a certain crowding-out effect on household consumption. The proportion of tourism consumption decreases accordingly, which cannot effectively promote the competitiveness of the tourism industry.

Models 5 and 6 show the impact of a time lag of new infrastructure investment on the competitiveness of the tourism industry. We believe that despite the increase of the coefficient, there is no obvious lag effect of new infrastructure investment and the feedback of the investment effect can be achieved in time. Therefore, the current investment stock is used as an explanatory variable in the following analysis.

4.2 Diverse impact of new infrastructure

4.2.1 impact of infrastructure type..

The analysis of the impact of different types of infrastructures on tourism competitiveness ( Table 6 ) shows that information infrastructure, convergent infrastructure has a significant impact on the competitiveness of the regional tourism industry. The impact of convergent infrastructure on the competitiveness of tourism industry is the most significant (regression coefficient 0.4337), followed by information infrastructure (0.3560).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278274.t006

The main reason for this phenomenon is that convergent infrastructure is the profound application of new generation information technology through the construction of traditional infrastructure. The convergence of information technology and digital economy has created the development path of intelligent city, intelligent transportation and intelligent sightseeing in China. By building convergent infrastructure, the region can provide efficient basic services in accommodation, transportation, catering and medical care, improve tourists’ leisure experience and enhance the competitiveness of the tourism industry. The information infrastructure is dominated by 5G, the Internet of Things, and the Industrial Internet, such as intelligent sightseeing reservation, information-based tourism platform, and live streaming tours, which have been increasing in recent years, realize the online information collection of tourists and provide marketing, management, and service standards for attractions and hotels. Innovation infrastructure consists of the infrastructure to support technology development, scientific research and product development. It is generally dominated by the Chinese government and scientific research institutions, with relatively little private investment capacity. The development of innovation infrastructure is highly targeted, and it will take a long time for the tourism industry to receive technical support from the funds invested by governments and scientific research institutions in different regions.

It is worth noting that models 4 to 6 introduce the quadratic term of different types of infrastructure investment into the regression model, and the regression coefficient of the first term of convergent infrastructure and innovation infrastructure is positive, while the regression coefficient of the quadratic term is negative, suggesting that the effect of the two on the competitiveness of the tourism industry is an "inverted U curve" with an obvious inflection point. The insignificant effect of information infrastructure on the competitiveness of the tourism industry indicates that the marginal effect of investment in information infrastructure has not decreased significantly and the capital stock of information infrastructure needs to be built up continuously. Therefore, investment in the construction of new infrastructure in China should not be increased blindly, but should be targeted and gradual, to avoid wasting resources through a blanket approach.

4.2.2 Impact of regional context.

Regional site diversity is an important factor affecting regional industrial competitiveness. The results show that ( Table 7 ), after adding the cross term of regional dummy variables and infrastructure investment, the impact of infrastructure investment on the economic peripheral western region is higher than that in the developed east region. In order to clarify the main reasons for this phenomenon, this paper divides infrastructure into three categories to verify their effects on tourism competitiveness in different regions.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278274.t007

The promotion of information infrastructure to the tourism competitiveness of the western regions of China is higher than that of the eastern regions. Although the investment in information infrastructure in the eastern region is the best in China, it still lags behind the development level of the region’s own tourism industry, which leads to the low empowerment performance of information infrastructure. On the contrary, the level of investment in information infrastructure in the western regions is relatively low, but the marginal effect of these investments on the tourism industry in this region is significant. Convergence infrastructure has a similar effect on the competitiveness of the tourism industry, as the marginal effect of converged infrastructure on economic peripheral is high.

The difference is that the innovation infrastructure has no obvious effect on the eastern and central regions, while the western region has a significant effect.This is because the investment in innovative infrastructure in the eastern and central regions is still unable to meet the needs of tourism, so the role of economies of scale is insufficient. The innovative infrastructure in the western region will help promote regional opening up and gradually realize the transformation of the regional economic growth mode.

4.2.3 Impact of investment scale.

The effect of the differences in investment scale shows that the average capital stock for new infrastructure construction in China is 0.554, and the average capital stock for information infrastructure, convergent infrastructure, and innovation infrastructure is 0.183, 0.236, and 0.134, respectively. The average value of infrastructure investment of different types is taken as the boundary for the construction of dummy variables, and after adding the cross term between the dummy variables of scale and level of infrastructure investment ( Table 8 ), model 1 represents the impact of infrastructure construction of different scales on tourism competitiveness, and models 2 to 4 analyze infrastructure construction in three main categories.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278274.t008

Overall, adequate new infrastructure investment has a positive effect on improving tourism competitiveness, but it should be emphasized that the marginal benefit actually declines gradually as the size of the investment increases. Combined result of the previous results (Tables 5 – 7 ), the investment effect of innovation infrastructure (model 4) can still be improved significantly. Too low investment in innovative infrastructure cannot enhance the competitiveness of the tourism industry, which needs to be improved by increasing the investment scale. However, it should be pointed out that the implementation effect of innovative infrastructure projects in western China should be emphasized, and the coordination between infrastructure projects and investment in the tourism industry should be planned to avoid the negative impact of infrastructure investment crushing the investment of the tourism industry.

The impact of integrated infrastructure (model 3) is significant, the expansion of investment scale has not brought more enabling effects. Although this is consistent with the law of diminishing marginal utility, we should be wary of the phase shift of regional differentiation. China should moderately reduce investment in traditional infrastructure in China and focus on the efficient integration of new-generation information technology and traditional infrastructure in China.

5 Discussion and conclusion

Since the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, China has increased its investment in the construction of new technologies and facilities, and the Chinese government has stimulated and vigorously promoted the construction of infrastructure related to the new generation of information technology and 5G technology, hoping to achieve economic impact on a wide range of industries through large-scale investment. Such large-scale investments are taking place not only in China’s economic core cities and eastern coastal areas but also in China’s economically marginal central and western regions. For example, the government of Guizhou Province, China’s least developed province, has launched the "Data Operation in Eastern China and Hash rate Support in Western China" project, investing RMB 17 billion in Big Data by 2022. In addition, 18 major projects related to 5G have been launched in China’s core economic cities such as Shenzhen. We cannot help but wonder if large-scale new infrastructure projects and investments are actually delivering the desired results and helping industries that otherwise lack momentum. The tourism industry was one of the fastest-growing future industries in China, but the COVID -19 pandemic led to a sudden halt in industry development in 2020. How should China seek a new breakthrough to achieve a new round of economic growth? Will government investment in infrastructure play a role in stagnant industrial competitiveness? Based on China’s new economic phenomenon and the practical issues that need to be addressed, we discuss how China’s new infrastructure construction will affect the competitiveness of the regional tourism industry. Below are our thoughts and conclusions:

China’s new infrastructure investment shows a sustained growth trend. Based on the impact model of new infrastructure investment and regional competitiveness in tourism, it is found that there is a positive relationship between the two. Consequently, regional competitiveness in tourism can be improved through the construction of new infrastructure. It should also be noted that the impact relationship is not a continuous linear relationship, but an inverted U-shaped curve and the marginal effect decreases over time. Therefore, the scale of infrastructure construction cannot be expanded blindly. Instead, it is necessary to analyze and understand the status of infrastructure investment and the development of the regional tourism industry to carry out appropriate construction, which requires comprehensive consideration of the region, infrastructure types and investment scale, and other specific factors.

Combined with the different types of infrastructure deployment and the existing level of investment (1) the deployment of convergent infrastructure represented by the Internet, Big Data, artificial intelligence, and other technologies have the greatest impact, as these technologies are widely used to provide basic tourism-related services and leisure experiences, and increased deployment in this segment can quickly improve the industry’s competitiveness. However, the impact of converged infrastructure has reached a tipping point in terms of the scale of investment. Therefore, we must pay attention to the efficiency of continued investment and avoid wasting resources. (2) The construction of innovation infrastructure in the form of scientific research, technological development, and research, and development of new products has little impact, because the research and development of new technologies and new products have a certain technical bottleneck, and the technical innovation cycle is generally long. In addition, such infrastructure investment is usually led by the government or local prestigious scientific research institutions, so the cost of time and human capital is extremely high, and regional industrial development needs more cycles. There is no obvious inflection point in the development of information infrastructure, especially 5G and IoT, which is different from the other two categories, suggesting that information infrastructure does not necessarily have a marginal effect on tourism development. Combined with the investment scale, the promotion effect of investment in innovation infrastructure has not yet been fully realized. Therefore, a moderate increase in investment in innovationinfrastructure within a certain period will have a good marginal effect on improving industrial competitiveness.

Considering the regional heterogeneity, East China has become a core economic region, and the tourism market there is very receptive and responds quickly to the application of new technologies. Therefore, investment in information and convergence infrastructure in the region can significantly improve industrial competitiveness, but there is still an insufficient response to scientific research and innovation infrastructure in the region. This shows that even in the most developed core regions of China, original innovation and technology transformation is still a problem that limits the improvement of industrial competitiveness. Western China is a relatively marginal region in terms of economic development, but precisely because of its weak base, the region is more responsive to the country’s new infrastructure, and an increase in investment and improvement in the tourism environment and conditions can quickly pull up competitiveness. Together with the rich tourism resources, the investment in infrastructure makes up for the region’s original backwardness. Central China has completed China’s industrial transfer, but it is not rich in original resources, and its economic resource advantage is far lower than that of the core economic regions. Therefore, an advantageous path to regional development has yet to be found. Infrastructure investment should not be blindly increased to drive industrial development so that the marginal effect is not extremely small. Therefore, depending on the above-mentioned regional conditions and differences in demand, precise new infrastructure investment can avoid a blanket approach and improve the competitiveness of the regional industry.

Achieving competitiveness in the regional tourism industry is in itself a difficult and complex socioeconomic issue, and the relationship between new infrastructure construction and industrial competitiveness cannot be resolved by a simple index regression. Although this is a clue to solving the problem, in our further research we will describe the mechanism of this impact through in-depth interviews and further discuss the cross-regional synergistic facilitation through inter-regional relationships.

Supporting information

S1 appendix. descriptive statistics for indicators..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278274.s001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278274.s002

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Investment in tourism infrastructure includes investment in components such as transport and communications infrastructure, the hotel and restaurant industry, and recreation facilities... Investment in tourism infrastructure development to make destinations and services increasingly attractive is considered a key measure in developing a country’s tourist destinations. It has a strong and positive impact on visitor attraction.

1. Introduction

2. the role of transport infrastructure and communications infrastructure, 3. the role of the hotel and restaurant industry, 4. the role of recreation facilities, 5. the influence of uncertain factors.

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Tourism’s Importance for Growth Highlighted in World Economic Outlook Report

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Tourism’s Importance for Growth Highlighted in World Economic Outlook Report

All Regions
10 Nov 2023

Tourism has again been identified as a key driver of economic recovery and growth in a new report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). With UNWTO data pointing to a return to 95% of pre-pandemic tourist numbers by the end of the year in the best case scenario, the IMF report outlines the positive impact the sector’s rapid recovery will have on certain economies worldwide.

According to the World Economic Outlook (WEO) Report , the global economy will grow an estimated 3.0% in 2023 and 2.9% in 2024. While this is higher than previous forecasts, it is nevertheless below the 3.5% rate of growth recorded in 2022, pointing to the continued impacts of the pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and from the cost-of-living crisis.

Tourism key sector for growth

The WEO report analyses economic growth in every global region, connecting performance with key sectors, including tourism. Notably, those economies with "large travel and tourism sectors" show strong economic resilience and robust levels of economic activity. More specifically, countries where tourism represents a high percentage of GDP have recorded faster recovery from the impacts of the pandemic in comparison to economies where tourism is not a significant sector.

As the report Foreword notes: "Strong demand for services has supported service-oriented economies—including important tourism destinations such as France and Spain".

Looking Ahead

The latest outlook from the IMF comes on the back of UNWTO's most recent analysis of the prospects for tourism, at the global and regional levels. Pending the release of the November 2023 World Tourism Barometer , international tourism is on track to reach 80% to 95% of pre-pandemic levels in 2023. Prospects for September-December 2023 point to continued recovery, driven by the still pent-up demand and increased air connectivity particularly in Asia and the Pacific where recovery is still subdued.

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Socio-economic Development of Tourism Infrastructure

A A Ostovskaya 1 , E A Smirnova 2 and S P Shendrikova 3

Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science , Volume 459 , Chapter 4. Citation A A Ostovskaya et al 2020 IOP Conf. Ser.: Earth Environ. Sci. 459 052064 DOI 10.1088/1755-1315/459/5/052064

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1 Department of public and municipal administration, Institute of Economics and Management, V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University, 4 Vernadsky Avenue, Simferopol 295007, Russian Federation

2 Department of enterprise financing and insurance, Institute of Economics and Management, V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University, 4 Vernadsky Avenue, Simferopol 295007, Russian Federation

3 Humanitarian and Pedagogical Academy (branch) in Yalta, Federal State Autonomous Educational Institution of Higher Education "Crimean Federal University named after V.I. Vernadsky"

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The tourism industry is the dominant factor of socio-economic growth in many countries which have similar political, historical, geographical and cultural features. This indicates considerable potential for tourism development providing the availability of the necessary infrastructure supporting the adequate functioning of the industry. The article reviews the definition of the tourism infrastructure in a number of aspects and introduces the steps of the tourism infrastructure analysis in the region. The calculation of the integrated index of the tourism infrastructure in the region is carried out by means of standardizing the indices as per separate elements of the tourism infrastructure.

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Impact of tourism development upon environmental sustainability: a suggested framework for sustainable ecotourism

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Published: 19 August 2022
Volume 30 , pages 5917–5930, ( 2023 )

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Qadar Bakhsh Baloch 1 ,
Syed Naseeb Shah 1 ,
Nadeem Iqbal 2 ,
Muhammad Sheeraz 3 ,
Muhammad Asadullah 4 ,
Sourath Mahar 5 &
Asia Umar Khan 6

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The empirical research investigated the relationship between tourism development and environmental suitability to propose a framework for sustainable ecotourism. The framework suggested a balance between business and environmental interests in maintaining an ecological system with the moderating help of government support and policy interventions. The study population encompasses tourism stakeholders, including tourists, representatives from local communities, members of civil administration, hoteliers, and tour operators serving the areas. A total of 650 questionnaires were distributed to respondents, along with a brief description of key study variables to develop a better understanding. After verifying the instrument’s reliability and validity, data analysis was conducted via hierarchical regression. The study findings revealed that a substantial number of people perceive socio-economic benefits, including employment and business openings, infrastructure development from tourism development, and growth. However, the state of the natural and environmental capital was found to be gradually degrading. Alongside the social environment, social vulnerability is reported due to the overutilization of land, intrusion from external cultures, and pollution in air and water due to traffic congestion, accumulation of solid waste, sewage, and carbon emissions. The study suggested a model framework for the development of sustained ecotourism, including supportive government policy interventions to ensure effective conservation of environmental and natural resources without compromising the economic viability and social well-beings of the locals. Furthermore, the variables and the constructs researched can be replicated to other destinations to seek valuable inputs for sustainable destination management elsewhere.

Balancing tourism and conservation: analysing the sustainability of tourism in the city of Naples through citizen perspectives

Massimo Aria, Luca D’Aniello, … Francesca Pagliara

Sustainable Tourism Indicators in Cities

Ecotourism as a Core of Sustainability in Tourism

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Introduction

Tourism is a vibrant force that stimulates travel to explore nature, adventures, wonders, and societies, discover cultures, meet people, interact with values, and experience new traditions and events. Tourism development attracts tourists to a particular destination to develop and sustain a tourism industry. Moreover, environmental sustainability is the future-based conscious effort aimed at conserving socio-cultural heritage and preserving natural resources to protect environmental ecosystems through supporting people’s health and economic well-being. Environment sustainability can be reflected in clean and green natural landscaping, thriving biodiversity, virgin sea beaches, long stretches of desert steppes, socio-cultural values, and archeological heritage that epitomize tourists’ degree of motivation and willingness of the local community to welcome the visitors. In this context, tourism growth and environmental sustainability are considered interdependent constructs; therefore, the increase in tourism development and tourists’ arrivals directly affects the quality of sustained and green tourism (Azam et al. 2018 ; Hassan et al. 2020 ; Sun et al. 2021 ).

According to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), tourism is one of the fastest-growing industries, contributing more than 10% to the global GDP (UNWTO 2017; Mikayilov et al. 2019 ). Twenty-five million international tourists in 1950 grew to 166 million in 1970, reaching 1.442 billion in 2018 and projected to be 1.8 billion by 2030. Mobilizing such a substantial human tourist’s mass is most likely to trickle environmental pollution along with its positive effects on employment, wealth creation, and the economy. The local pollution at tourist destinations may include air emissions, noise, solid waste, littering, sewage, oil and chemicals, architectural/visual pollution, heating, car use, and many more. In addition, an uncontrolled, overcrowded, and ill-planned tourist population has substantial adverse effects on the quality of the environment. It results in the over-consumption of natural resources, degradation of service quality, and an exponential increase in wastage and pollution. Furthermore, tourism arrivals beyond capacity bring problems rather than a blessing, such as leaving behind soil erosion, attrition of natural resources, accumulation of waste and air pollution, and endangering biodiversity, decomposition of socio-cultural habitats, and virginity of land and sea (Kostić et al. 2016 ; Shaheen et al. 2019 ; Andlib and Salcedo-Castro 2021 ).

Tourism growth and environmental pollution have been witnessed around the globe in different regions. The ASEAN countries referred to as heaven for air pollution, climate change, and global warming are experiencing economic tourism and pollution (Azam et al. 2018 ; Guzel and Okumus 2020 ). In China, more than fifty-eight major Chinese tourism destinations are inviting immediate policy measures to mitigate air pollution and improve environmental sustainability (Zhang et al. 2020 ). Similarly, Singapore, being a top-visited country, is facing negative ecological footprints and calling for a trade-off between tourism development and environmental sustainability (Khoi et al. 2021 ). The prior studies established that international tourism and the tourism-led growth surge tourists’ arrival, energy consumption, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions, and air pollution resultantly cause climate change (Aslan et al. 2021 ). South Asian countries, more specifically Sri Lanka and Pakistan, are on the verge of tourism growth and environmental pollution compared to other countries (Chishti et al. 2020 ; Tiwari et al. 2021 ).

Pakistan is acknowledged in the tourism world because of its magnificent mountains with the densest concentration of high peaks in the world, scenic beauty of Neelum Valley, Murree, Chitral, and swat Valleys’, Kaghan, Naran, Hunza, Gilgit Baltistan (Baloch 2007 ), sacred shrines of Sikhism, archeological sites of the Gandhara and Indus Valley civilizations such as Mohenjo-Daro, Taxila including pre-Islamic Kalasha community (Baloch and Rehman 2015 ). In addition, Pakistan’s hospitable and multicultural society offers rich traditions, customs, and festivals for the tourists to explore, commemorate, cherish, and enjoy. Pakistan’s geographical and socio-cultural environment represents its resource and an opportunity (Baloch and Rehman 2015 ); therefore, Pakistan is looking to capitalize on it as a promising source of the foreign reserve to compensate for its mounting trade deficit (Baloch et al. 2020 ).

Tourism expansion has been established as a very deleterious ecological cost vis-à-vis the socio-economic benefits it passes to the host communities (Pulido-Fernández et al. 2019 ; Simo-Kengne 2022 ). In this context, the research is motivated to investigate the relationships between Pakistan’s tourism development activities and environmental sustainability. Drawing from the arguments of Pulido-Fernández et al. ( 2019 ) and Simo-Kengne ( 2022 ), it is feared that Pakistan’s ongoing determination to tourism development is likely to cause environmental degradation in two ways. Firstly, the tourism infrastructure developmental process would consume natural resources in the form of air and water pollution, loss of nature, and biodiversity. Secondly, the proliferation of tourism-related energy-consuming activities harms the environment by adding CO 2 emissions (Andlib and Saceldo-Castro 2021 ; Chien et al. 2021a ). Therefore, to tape this tourism-rich potential without compromising the sustainability of the natural and socio-cultural environment in the area, there is a dire need to develop Pakistan’s tourism areas into environment-friendly destinations.

Against the backdrop of a widening level of trade deficit, Pakistan’s rich tourism potential is being perceived as an immediate alternative for earning revenue to compensate for the current account gap. However, the developing large-scale tourism industry is considered a threat to deforestation, and air and water pollution, endangering biodiversity trading on resilient ecological credentials. The research study attempts to find an all-inclusive and comprehensive answer to the socio-ecological environmental concerns of tourism development and growth. Therefore, the research investigates the relationship between tourism development and its environmental sustainability to suggest a model framework for the development and growth of Sustainable Ecotourism in Pakistan along with its most visited destinations.

Literature review

Tourism development and growth

Tourism is considered a force of sound as it benefits travelers and communities in urban and suburban areas. Tourism development is the process of forming and sustaining a business for a particular or mix of segments of tourists’ as per their motivation in a particular area or at a specific destination. Primarily, tourism development refers to the all-encompassing process of planning, pursuing, and executing strategies to establish, develop, promote, and encourage tourism in a particular area or destination (Mandić et al. 2018 ; Ratnasari et al. 2020 ). A tourism destination may serve as a single motivation for a group of tourists or a mix of purposes, i.e., natural tourism, socio-cultural or religious tourism, adventure or business tourism, or a combination of two or more. Andlib and Salcedo-Castro ( 2021 ), drawing from an analysis approach, contended that tourism destinations in Pakistan offer a mix of promising and negative consequences concerning their socio-economic and environmental impressions on the host community. The promising socio-economic impacts for the local community are perceived in the form of employment and business opportunities, improved standard of living, and infrastructural development in the area. The adverse environmental outcomes include overcrowding, traffic congestion, air and noise pollution, environmental degradation, and encroachment of landscaping for the local community and the tourists. An extensive review of the literature exercise suggests the following benefits that the local community and the tourists accrue from the tour are as follows:

Generate revenue and monetary support for people and the community through local arts and culture commercialization.

Improve local resource infrastructure and quality of life, including employment generation and access to improved civic facilities.

Help to create awareness and understanding of different ethnic cultures, social values, and traditions, connecting them and preserving cultures.

Rehabilitate and conserve socio-cultural and historical heritage, including archeological and natural sites.

Establishment of natural parks, protracted areas, and scenic beauty spots.

Conservation of nature, biodiversity, and endangered species with control over animal poaching.

Improved water and air quality through afforestation, littering control, land and soil conservation, and recycling of used water and waste.

Tourism and hospitality business incorporates various business activities such as travel and transportation through the air or other modes of travel, lodging, messing, restaurants, and tourism destinations (Szpilko 2017 ; Bakhriddinovna and Qizi 2020 ). A tourist’s tourism experience is aimed at leisure, experiencing adventure, learning the culture or history of a particular area or ethnic entity, traveling for business or health, education, or religious purposes. The chain of activities adds value to the Tourism experience. Every activity contributes toward economic stimulation, job creation, revenue generation, and tourism development encompassing infrastructure for all activities involved in the tourism process. Tourism growth expresses the number of arrivals and the time of their stay/trips over a period of time. Tourism growth is measured through the interplay between tourists’ arrivals, tourism receipts, and travel time duration (Song et al. 2010 ; Arifin et al. 2019 ). The following factors drive the degree and level of tourism development and growth:

Environmental factors include scenic beauty, green spaces, snowy mountains, towering peaks, good climate and weather, the interconnectivity of destination, quality of infrastructure, etc.

Socio-economic factors: the distinctiveness of community, uniqueness of culture and social values, hospitality and adaptability, accessibility, accommodation, facilities and amenities, cost-effectiveness, price index, and enabling business environment.

Historical, cultural, and religious factors include historical and cultural heritage, religious sites, and cultural values and experiences.

The tourism development process and its different dynamics revolve around the nature of tourism planned for a particular destination or area, which can be specified as ecotourism, sustainable tourism, green tourism or regenerative tourism, etc. Ecotourism is “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of the local people, and involves interpretation and education” (Cheia, 2013 ; TIES, 2015). According to the World Conservation Union (IUCN), ecotourism involves “ Environmentally responsible travel to natural areas, to enjoy and appreciate nature (and accompanying cultural features, both past, and present) that promote conservation, have a low visitor impact and provide for beneficially active socio-economic involvement of local peoples ”. Moreover, Blangy and Wood ( 1993 ) defined it as “ responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and sustains the well-being of local people ” (p. 32). The concept of ecotourism is grounded upon a well-defined set of principles including “environmental conservation and education, cultural preservation and experience, and economic benefits” (Cobbinah 2015 ; De Grosbois and Fennell 2021 ).

Ecotourism minimizes tourism’s impact on the tourism resources of a specific destination, including lessening physical, social, interactive, and psychosomatic impacts. Ecotourism is also about demonstrating a positive and responsible attitude from the tourists and hosts toward protecting and preserving all components of the environmental ecosystem. Ecotourism reflects a purpose-oriented mindset, responsible for creating and delivering value for the destination with a high degree of kindliness for local environmental, political, or social issues. Ecotourism generally differs from mass tourism because of its following features (Liang et al. 2018 ; Ding and Cao 2019 ; Confente and Scarpi 2021 ):

Conscientious behavior focuses on the low impact on the environment.

Sensitivity and warmth for local cultures, values, and biodiversity.

Supporting the sustenance of efforts for the conservation of local resources.

Sharing and delivering tourism benefits to the local communities.

Local participation as a tourism stakeholder in the decision-making process.

Educating the tourist and locals about the sensitivity and care of the environment because tourism without proper arrangement can endanger the ecosystems and indigenous cultures and lead to significant ecological degradation.

Sustainability aims to recognize all impacts of tourism, minimize the adverse impacts, and maximize the encouraging ones. Sustainable tourism involves sustainable practices to maintain viable support for the ecology of the tourism environment in and around the destination. Sustainable tourism is natural resource-based tourism that resembles ecotourism and focuses on creating travel openings with marginal impact and encouraging learning about nature having a low impact, conservation, and valuable consideration for the local community’s well-being (Fennell 2001 & 2020 ; Butowski 2021 ). On the other hand, ecotourism inspires tourists to learn and care about the environment and effectively participate in the conservation of nature and cultural activities. Therefore, ecotourism is inclusive of sustainable tourism, whereas the focus of sustainable tourism includes the following responsibilities:

Caring, protecting, and conserving the environment, natural capital, biodiversity, and wildlife.

Delivering socio-economic welfare for the people living in and around tourists' destinations.

Identifying, rehabilitating, conserving, and promoting cultural and historical heritage for visitors learning experiences.

Bringing tourists and local groups together for shared benefits.

Creating wide-ranging and reachable opportunities for tourists.

Environment and sustainability of ecosystem

The term “environment” is all-inclusive of all the natural, organic living, inorganic, and non-natural things. The environment also denotes the interface among all breathing species with the natural resources and other constituents of the environment. Humans’ activities are mainly responsible for environmental damage as people and nations have contemplated modifying the environment to suit their expediencies. Deforestation, overpopulation, exhaustion of natural capital, and accumulation of solid waste and sewage are the major human activities that result in polluted air and water, acid rain, amplified carbon dioxide levels, depletion of the ozone, climate change, global warming, extermination of species, etc. A clean, green, and hygienic fit environment has clean air, clean water, clean energy, and moderate temperature for the healthy living of humans, animals, and biodiversity as nature is destined for them by their creatures. Maintaining and sustaining a clean environment is indispensable for human and biodiversity existence, fostering growth and development for conducting business and creating wealth. The environment can be sustained through conservation, preservation, and appropriate management to provide clean air, water, and food safe from toxic contamination, waste, and sewage disposal, saving endangered species and land conservation.

The globalization process, known for building socio-economic partnerships across countries, is also charged with encouraging environmental degradation through the over-consumption of natural resources and energy consumption, deforestation, land erosion, and weakening (Adebayo and Kirikkaleli 2021 ; Sun et al. 2021 ). Chien et al. ( 2021b ), while studying the causality of environmental degradation in Pakistan, empirically confirmed the existence of a significant connection between CO 2 emissions and GDP growth, renewable energy, technological innovation, and globalization. However, Chien et al. ( 2021a ) suggested using solar energy as a source of economic intervention to control CO 2 emissions and improve environmental quality in China. The danger of air pollution is hard to escape as microscopic air pollutants pierce through the human respiratory and cardiovascular system, injuring the lungs, heart, and brain. Ill-planned and uncontrolled human activities negatively affect ecosystems, causing climate change, ocean acidification, melting glaciers, habitation loss, eutrophication, air pollution, contaminants, and extinction of endangered species ( Albrich et al. 2020 ) .

Humans have a more significant effect on their physical environment in numerous ways, such as pollution, contamination, overpopulation, deforestation, burning fossil fuels and driving to soil erosion, polluting air and water quality, climate change, etc. UNO Agenda for 2030 “Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs) mirrors the common premise that a healthy environment and human health are interlaced as integral to the satisfaction of fundamental human rights, i.e., right to life, well-being, food, water and sanitation, quality of life and biodiversity to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages (SDG3)—which includes air quality that is dependent upon terrestrial ecosystems (SDG15), oceans (SDG14), cities (SDG11), water, cleanliness, and hygiene (SDG6) (Swain 2018 ; Opoku 2019 ; Scharlemann et al. 2020 ). The UNEP stated that 58% of diarrhea cases in developing economies is due to the non-provision of clean water and inadequate sanitation facilities resulting in 3.5 million deaths globally (Desai 2016 ; Ekins and Gupta 2019 ).

Climate change overwhelmingly alters ecosystems’ ability to moderate life-threatening happenings, such as maintaining water quality, regulating water flows, unbalancing the temporal weather and maintaining glaciers, displacing or extinction biodiversity, wildfire, and drought (Zhu et al. 2019 ; Marengo et al. 2021 ). Research studies advocate that exposure to natural environments is correlated with mental health, and proximity to green space is associated with lowering stress and minimizing depression and anxiety (Noordzij et al. 2020 ; Slater et al. 2020 ; Callaghan et al. 2021 ). Furthermore, the Ecosystem is affected by pollution, over-exploitation of natural resources, climate change, invasive and displacing species, etc. Hence, providing clean air and water, hygienic places, and green spaces enriches the quality of life: condensed mortality, healthier value-added productivity, and is vital to maintaining mental health. On the other hand, climate change aggravates environment-related health hazards through adverse deviations to terrestrial ecology, oceans, biodiversity, and access to fresh and clean water.

Tourism development denotes all activities linked with creating and processing facilities providing services for the tourists on and around a destination. Infrastructure development is vital for developing a tourism destination to advance tourists’ living conditions and preserve natural and cultural heritage by constructing new tourist facilities, the destinations administrative and supporting echelons, including community living, etc. Development for tourism infrastructure and land use often burdens natural capital through over-consumption, leading to soil erosion, augmented pollution, loss of natural habitats, and endangered species. Development of tourism infrastructure and construction work has profound implications on environmental degradation, reduction in green spaces, deforestation, solid waste and sewage, overutilization of air and water, emission of CO 2 and other gases contributing to air and water pollution, climate change, loss and displacement of biodiversity, and the degradation of ecosystems. These negative consequences of tourism development result in many problems for the tourists and the indigenous people in the foreseeable future (Azam et al. 2018 ; Hoang et al. 2020 ).

A report published by UNEP titled “Infrastructure for climate action” has suggested governments introduce sustainable infrastructure as the prevailing one is responsible for causing 79% of all greenhouse gas emissions in struggling climate change, alleviation, and adaptation efforts. Sustainable infrastructure signifies that structures’ planning, construction, and functioning do not weaken the social, economic, and ecological systems (UNEP 2021 ; Krampe 2021 ). Sustainable infrastructure is the only solution that ensures societies, nature, and the environment flourish together. Therefore, Sustainable Ecotourism supports adapting pro-environment and nature-based climate change strategies that help resilient biodiversity and ecosystem to impact climate change. The proposed strategy is to focus on the conservation and restoration of ecosystems to combat climate hazards, fluctuating rainfalls, soil erosion, temperature variations, floods, and extreme wind storms (Niedziółka 2014 ; Setini 2021 )

Pakistan’s tourism infrastructure suffered a colossal amount of damage during the earthquake of October 8, 2005, which left widespread demolition and destruction to its human, economic assets, and infrastructure networks, especially in Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's tourism areas. The tourism-related infrastructure, including hotels, destination facilities of social service delivery and commerce, water channels, and communications networks, were either drained or virtually destroyed. The destruction in the aftermath of the earthquake was further added by the war against terror in tourism-hit areas, resulting in the redundancy of tourists and tourism facilities for a long time (Akbar et al. 2017 ; Zakaria and Ahmed 2019 ). The tourism revival activities during the post-earth quack, post-terrorism scenario, and COVID-19 period called for various entrepreneurial activities, including the construction of infrastructure, hotels, road networks, community living, etc. Development and reconstruction of the livelihood and hospitality infrastructure through entrepreneurship were undertaken intensively through a public-private partnership from national and international findings (Qamar and Baloch 2017 ; Sadiq 2021 ; Dogar et al. 2021 ).

The revival and reinvigoration of infrastructure in tourism areas were backed up by extensive deforestation, use of local green land, rebuilding of the road network, displacement of biodiversity, and overtaxing the consumption of water and other natural resources. The deforestation, extensive use of green land, and over-consumption of water and other natural resources have depleted the tourism value of the area on the one hand and degraded the environment on the other. However, it was the focused rehabilitation activities of earthquake and Pakistan’s Government’s socio-environment conservation strategy of the Billion Trees plantation program in the province, including dominating tourism areas. The afforestation and loss of green tops are being reclaimed through these efforts, and the tourism environment is soon expected to regenerate (Qamar and Baloch 2017 ; Rauf et al. 2019 ; Siddiqui and Siddiqui 2019 ).

Government support and policy interventions

Tourism generates wide-ranging benefits for the economy, community, and people. Tourism contributes to the economy through revenue generation and shares responsibility with the Government to alleviate poverty alleviation, create opportunities for job placements, protect environments, and conserve natural ecosystems and biodiversity. It is assumed that if the tourism industry is left to its own, it will most likely prefer its business interests over environments or biodiversity. Governments, custodians of the life and well-being of their subjects, are directly responsible for providing a clean environment, nature, and Ecosystem. Therefore, national and local governments are responsible for preparing and implementing tourism development plans and enforcing values and standards for tourism development in conformity with the prerequisites of environmental sustainability. Through institutional governance, governments help tourism development by providing financial and budgetary support, regulatory framework, land, physical resources, infrastructure, etc. Provision and facilitation for Sustainability of Ecotourism and conservation of environment and biodiversity are dependent upon Government-supported interventions as follows:

The regulatory framework for setting up tourism-related entrepreneurship and quality standards can support ecotourism and prevent environmental degradation on any account.

Provision of budgetary support for ecosystem conservation and regeneration of bio-diversity-related projects.

Plan, rehabilitate if needed, promote conservation and protection of socio-cultural, historic, antique, and natural endowments in coordination with other public and private agencies, and deal with the defaulters, if any.

Promoting and undertaking afforestation alongside land conservation and discouraging deforestation, soil erosion, accumulation of solid waste, littering, and any direct or indirect loss or threat to biodiversity.

Setting restrictions for over-tourism beyond capacity and quality standards for transportation, restaurants, hotels, food and drinking water, etc.

Placing enforcement mechanism necessary to ensure application of the regulatory framework and quality standards applicable along with all activities inclusive to the Ecotourism value chain.

Theoretical support and hypothesis development

According to the social disruption theory, rapidly expanding societies usually experience a period of widespread crisis and a loss of their conventional routines and attitudes. The crisis impacts people whose mental health, worldviews, behavioral patterns, and social networks may all be impacted (Çalişkan and Özer 2021 ). According to the social disruption theory, fast community change brought on by population growth will result in a variety of social issues that are signs of a generally disorganized community (Smith et al. 2001 ). Because some types of tourism communities experience rapid expansion accompanied by intensive development and rapid social change over a relatively short period of time, they seem to be great settings for studying various postulations of the social disruption theory.

Place change and social disruption theory are closely connected. According to this assumption, when a community undergoes fast expansion, it tends to experience a generalized crisis that might culminate in several social issues as changes spread throughout the community and among individuals (Rasoolimanesh et al. 2019 ). Place change can result from fundamental community restructuring due to economic development, new class divides, and migration of both long-term and temporary people (Nelson 2001 ). Social unrest, though, is not enduring. Instead, it is transitory; societies gradually adjust to these changes (Deery et al. 2012 ).

The standard of living may initially deteriorate, but due to the adaptability of people and communities, they will gradually reinvigorate and strengthen themselves accordingly. Furthermore, the social disruption proposition reinforces one of the challenges in analyzing the effects of tourism, particularly in emerging nations, since it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the effects of tourism and the overall ongoing development (Park and Stokowski 2009 ) (Fig. 1 ).

Tourism development and growth significantly affect natural environment resources.

Tourism development and growth significantly affect environmental pollution.

Tourism development and growth significantly affect the physical ecosystem of the environment.

Tourism development and growth significantly affect the socio-cultural environment.

Tourism development and growth significantly affect the economic environment of people and the community.

Government policy and support significantly moderate the relationship between tourism development and growth and the environmental factors.

Conceptual framework

Methodology

The study aimed to investigate the association of tourism development and its impact on environmental factors. Therefore, a survey method was employed to collect data by including all the relevant people in the locality. The study is based on stakeholders’ opinions from Pakistan’s most visited tourist areas, including Murree, Swat, Chitral, Naran, Kaghan, Neelum Valley, Malam Jabba, Ayubia, and Nathia Gali. A total of 650 stakeholders were contacted from the above-mentioned tourist destinations through survey. The distribution of the sample is mentioned in Table 1 .

Using quantitative techniques, hierarchical linear regression analysis was employed to investigate the possible relationships between tourism growth and various dimensions of environmental sustainability. The results below reveal that tourism development translates into environmental deterioration, and the relationship between tourism and environmental sustainability is bidirectional.

Tourism growth and development were measured through a five-item scale. The environment was measured through 16 items combined scale with sub-dimensions; depletion of Natural Resources=3 items, Polluting Environment=3 items, Physical Effects on Ecosystem=4 items, Socio-Cultural Degradation=3 items, and Economic Environment=3-items. Similarly, our moderating variable, Government Interventions and Support, was measured using a 5-item scale. Table 2 below presents the details of the instruments.

Analysis and results

Data were analyzed using SPSS Version 26. It includes correlation, linear regression, and stepwise hierarchal regression analysis.

Table 3 above shows that our Tourism Growth and Development has significant and positive relationship with Polluting Environment ( r = 0.20**), Physical Effects on Ecosystem ( r = 0.19**), Depletion of Natural Resource ( r = 0.24**), Socio-Cultural Degradation ( r = 0.18**). However, Tourism Growth and Development has positive relationship with Economic Environment ( r = 0.29**) and Government Interventions and Support ( r = 0.13**).

Results of linear regression analysis at Table 4 above depict that tourism growth and development predicts 4.1% variance in Depletion of Natural Resources ( β = 0.20, p <0.01), 3.9% variance in pollution ( β = 0.19, p <0.01), 6% variance in Physical Effects on Ecosystem ( β = 0.24, p <0.01), 3.6% variance in Socio-Cultural Degradation ( β = 0.18, p <0.01), and 8.8% variance in Economic Environment ( β = 0.29, p <0.01).

The study analyzes the applied two-step hierarchal regression. In the first step, Tourism Growth and Government Interventions were treated as independent variables, and their significant impact was measured. In the second step, the interaction term Tourism and Growth× Government Interventions was added, and its impact was measured. The results suggest that Government Interventions and Support moderate the relationship between Tourism Growth and the Environmental variables (Table 5 ).

The study has reported unique findings regarding tourism and its environmental impacts. We found that tourism growth and development generate economic activity on the one hand. However, it has specific adverse environmental and socio-cultural outcomes on the other hand as well. Our study revealed that tourism growth and development predict a 4.1% variance in Depletion of Natural Resources ( β = 0.202*, p <0.01). This suggests that due to the expansion of tourism in the country, natural resources are continuously depleted to meet the needs of tourists. Studies also supported our findings and suggested that revival and reinvigoration of infrastructure in tourism areas were backed up by extensive deforestation, use of local green land, rebuilding of the road network, displacement of biodiversity, and overtaxing the consumption of water and other natural resources (Qamar and Baloch 2017 ; Sadiq 2021 ; Dogar et al. 2021 ). The prior studies are consistent with our hypothesis that “tourism development and growth significantly affect natural environment resources.”

We further found that tourism growth and development predict a 3.9% variance in pollution ( β = 0.198*, p <0.01), suggesting that tourism expansion may pollute the natural environment. Furthermore, recent national statistics depict that major human activities at local tourism destinations such as Kalam, Sawat, Muree, and Northern Areas have accumulated solid waste and sewage, resulting in polluted air and water. Further, research also suggests that the overflow of tourists to tourist destinations may adversely affect the environment due to human activities (Noordzij et al. 2020 ; Slater et al. 2020 ; Andlib and Salcedo-Castro 2021 ; Callaghan et al. 2021 ). Thus, it is safe to argue that the growth of tourism has a particularly detrimental effect on the environment. These findings also support our hypothesis, “Tourism development and growth significantly contribute to environmental pollution.”

The results reported that tourism growth and development predict a 6% variance in Physical Effects on the Ecosystem ( β = 0.245*, p <0.01). Studies have reported that deforestation and alteration in species’ natural environment for tourism facilities construction may adversely affect environmental health (Kuvan, 2010 ; Azam et al. 2018 ; Hoang et al. 2020 ; Andlib and Salcedo-Castro 2021 ). During post-terrorism and post-Covid-19 times in Pakistan, millions of local tourists moved to popular tourist destinations that required new infrastructure to accommodate these tourists. Consequently, colossal deforestation and other detrimental human activities have negatively affected ecosystem. These findings also support our hypothesis that tourism development and growth significantly affect the physical ecosystem of the environment.

The study reported a total of 3.6% variance in socio-cultural degradation ( β = 0.189*, p <0.01) due to tourism growth and development. These findings suggest that tourism’s growth and development may lead the inhabitants to imitate the foreign tourists regarding their living standards, which may endanger their traditional culture. Thus, our hypothesis that “tourism development and growth significantly affect the socio-cultural environment” is confirmed.

Further, it was found that tourism growth and development predict an 8.8% variance in the economic environment ( β = 0.297*, p <0.01). It is established from the literature that tourism growth and development generate economic activity in the country. Development projects such as the construction of infrastructure, hotels, and road networks generate economic activity to facilitate international and indigenous tourists, positively affecting the community’s living standard (Baloch et al. 2020 ). Thus, our hypothesis, “tourism development and growth significantly affect economic environment of people and community,” is confirmed.

Due to tourism growth and development, our study reported a 1.8% variance in Government Support and Interventions ( β = .133*, p <0.01). However, more recently, the Government of Pakistan has devised specific interventions that may help curb the adverse impacts of detrimental environmental factors. For example, developmental schemes such as the Billion Trees Plantation drive and Road-Infrastructure Network Development under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor initiative may prove moderators to curb the negative impacts of tourism growth on the environment (Qamar and Baloch 2017 ; Rauf et al. 2019 ; Siddiqui and Siddiqui 2019 ). Therefore, the hypothesis, Government policy and support, significantly moderates the relationship between tourism development and growth with the environment is confirmed based on these findings.

Suggested model for ecotourism framework

Through its detailed review of existing literature, prevailing tourism policies, and empirical inputs from the stakeholders’ perspectives, the study has identified a wide range of obstacles limiting the development and growth of ecotourism in Pakistan. The study suggests National Tourism Management authorities carefully invest in ecotourism destination’s planning and development in coordination with the environment development agency. The suggested model for ecotourism framework is initially meant for the tourism destinations specifically designated for ecotourism. However, selected points can also be extended to the quality management parameters set for the National Parks, Conservation and Protracted Areas, Museums, National or International event sites, etc. The national tourism authorities are to lay particular emphasis in their forthcoming National Tourism Policy on the development and promotion of Sustainable Ecotourism having, with focus on the following key areas:

Identify and classify four to five ecotourism destinations, including ecotourism-centered activities of value chains for priority development, which are administratively possible within budgetary constraints. However, the development plan shall consider the integral benefits of other developmental schemes such as the Billion Trees Plantation drive, Road-Infrastructure Network Development under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor initiative, International Union for Conservation of Nature (ICUN) programs in the area.

While staying within the alignment of UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) calling for ‘environmental sustainability’ and the development vision of each designated destination, the Tourists Management System shall take into cognizance of issues like managing capacity of the place, quality parameters for the conservation of the environment, and allowable activities thereof.

Identify degenerated destinations of religious, socio-cultural, or historical significance for their rehabilitation under the Regenerated tourism program.

Tourism Destinations that have been over-consumed and exhausted (e.g., Murree, Galiaat, Naran, Malam Jabba) because of over-tourism shall be planned for their reclamation through regenerated tourism. However, to facilitate the success of the regeneration of their tourism potential following is to be catered for:

To deflect the tourist pressure upon these destinations, the potential tourists from nearby cities and metropolitan areas be provided with nearby alternative destinations for leisure tourism as stay-tourism sites.

To prevent the environment from air pollution, the traffic load on the destination be curtailed through an effective traffic management strategy, provision of off-destination parking for combustion engine vehicles, and encouraging electric driven or hybrid vehicles for nearby parking.

Provision of clean drinking water through public infiltration plants, public toilets, solid waste carriers, and recycling of sewage and used water is recommended in the most visited areas of the destination.

Signposting at appropriate places, giving social messages encouraging to maintain cleanliness, avoid littering, ensure nature conservation, and humility toward biodiversity.

Develop all-inclusive, comprehensive execution plans to expedite the investments for the sustainable ecotourism, encouraging public–private cooperation, community involvement, and infrastructure mapping guaranteeing environmental conservation and safeguards.

Develop and place on the ground an all-inclusive program of capacity building for sustainable ecotourism, regenerative and green tourism services.

Develop and launch Pakistan tourism profile and Sustaining Ecotourism obligatory framework “to promote tourism on the one hand and nurture conscious ecological behavior among the potential tourists of the area”.

In order to fetch local ownership for the ecotourism center developments, all efforts shall be made to share the socio-economic benefits integral to the development scheme with the local population for community development.

As part of the destination management planning, identify complementary value chains and livelihood activities that could be developed as part of the overall ecotourism destination package.

Governments at all levels and the tourism Development and Promotion Agencies Network in Pakistan shall join hands to chalk out and, with a strict enforcement mechanism, a “Regulatory Framework for Ecotourism Friendly Destination” to sustain the efforts and policies undertaken in this regard on the one hand and generate responsible behavior from the tourism stakeholders on the other. Some of the suggestive points could be:

Setting new quality standards facilitating the promotion of ecotourism and environmental sustainability through acts of various bodies operating in the Ecotourism value chain, such as:

Revision of Private hotels Management Act (1976) and Tourists Operators Act (1976) alongside introduction and promulgation of a new “Tourism Destination Management Act” incorporating new quality standards as of today.

Promulgating laws to make all new construction/development projects responsible from any agency in the area, incorporating quality standards needed for environmental sustainability, and promoting ecotourism.

Set measures for the preservation of the local biodiversity and preservation of endangered species, including seeking support from internationally active environment conservation agencies, declaring local hunting illegal, introducing licensing programs for hunting of certain selected animals/ birds on the payment of a handsome amount to be used for the welfare of the local community.

Create awareness programs against deforestation, land conservation, and biodiversity, and maintain cleanliness, inculcating a culture of respecting and enjoying nature instead of spoiling it.

Conclusion, implications, and limitations of the study

The study premise was based on the contention that sustenance of ecotourism focuses on the economic viability of the business interests alongside the conservation and preservation of natural ecosystems, including ethical fairness to the socio-cultural environment of the host community. Ecotourism is a phenomenon that contributes to environmental sustainability through well-planned and careful destination management capable of balancing conflicting interests of business growth and environmental sustainability. Tourism-environment paradox suggests that the sustainability and survival of both are dependent upon the flourishing mode of each other. Quality of environment and sustainability of bio-ecosystem stimulates tourists’ arrivals and over-tourism beyond capacity with irresponsible behavior from tourists negatively influencing the environment and harming the ecosystem of nature. Ecotourism is not inevitably sustainable unless it is economically sustainable and environmentally maintainable besides being socio-culturally acceptable. Socio-culturally intolerable ecotourism means the activity which does not benefit locals and their socio-cultural values. Hence, the study concludes that ecotourism has to positively interplay between economy, environment, and culture without compromising one over others. The pursuit of sustainable ecotourism is not an end in meeting the little comforts of the business interests but rather a means to end the sustainability issues created due to ill-conceived tourism development and unmanageable growth.

Practical implications

Drawing from the findings and conclusions of the research, the study extends the following practical implications for effectively managing the process of tourism development and environmental sustainability in line with the dictates of the philosophy behind ecotourism:

Paradoxically tourism necessitates ecological capitals as primary ingredients for the creation of tourism experiences on the one hand. However, it is also contingent upon the conservation and preservation of ecological integrity on the other. The study suggests that unbalancing this “resource paradox” results in the harshness and tenacity of adversarial climate change, natural calamities, environmental pollution, and endangered biodiversity.

The research findings and the suggested framework for ecotourism imply that sustainable ecotourism principles-based planning is mandatory for destination management to assure effective trade-off between the business interests’ sustainability of the environmental ecosystem.

Tourism development and growth shall be steered through ecotourism principles as its sustainable model offers enduring social, environmental and economic, ecological integrity, and social and cultural benefits for the local community. Therefore, ecotourism is a recipe for preventing environmental degradation and guarantees sustainability of ecosystems nature and its biodiversity. Hence, ecotourism shall stand central priority focus for strategic management to nurture quality experiences from sustainable tourism.

To revive back the sustainability of the environment, in the areas where over-tourism has degraded the environment, schemes for regenerated tourism shall be immediately launched to mitigate the negative footprints on the sustainability of destinations, including reinforcing protracted conservation sites, biodiversity, and recouping endangered species, afforestation drives, recycling of water and solid waste, refurnishing of landscaping, preservation, and rehabilitation of cultural heritage and refurbishing of depleted infrastructure accordingly. Furthermore, to regenerate and sustain the tourism infrastructure of the destinations experiencing over-tourism, capacity building measures like capacity, recycling of water and solid waste, preventive measures to control air and water pollution, traffic control management, and spread of entertainment facilities shall be the focus of the regeneration plans.

The study implies that government authorities and policymakers have a special role in placing their moderating intervention in terms of policy guidelines, regulatory framework, and budgetary support, provision of inter-organizational synergy in planning and implementation of ecotourism strategies, protection of environmental resource base and conservation of natural and biological ecosystem, sustenance of socio-cultural value of local community over and above their economic and social well-being/quality life for the long run.

The study also implies that public and private policymakers lay down threshold criteria for responsible travel and tourism standards for destination management and its related supply chain. The laid criterion would facilitate management in nurturing “responsible behavior” to plan, protect, conserve, preserve, and sustain natural and cultural resources and responsible socio-economic development without compromising the sustainability of the environment and long-term well-being of the hoist community. The deep-seated adherence to social responsibility protocols by the tourism supply chain network can significantly increase the capacity of tourism destinations and improve the conscious awareness of green consumers along the tourism supply chain. Furthermore, the consciously responsible behavior among stakeholders and legislatures can strike a needed balance between the business interests and environments in favor of sustainability of socio-cultural, economic, and natural capital.

The study elucidates that responsible behavior necessitates purpose-built eco-friendly infrastructure and policy parameters to support the sustainability of environments across destinations. The strategic planning aligned with the sustainability-focused objectives dictates the need for artistic, innovative, and talented people and quality intuitions in harnessing quality tourism services and responsible tourism behavior. Furthermore, the study encourages community involvement in the developmental process, enactment of structural policies, preservation of socio-cultural heritage, and conservation of natural biodiversity as it would foster emotional bondage between the people of the host community and the tourism undertakings. Therefore, community and value chain managers shall collaborate to maximize the perceived benefits of responsible tourism while developing cultural exchanges and planning opportunities for leisure and tourism.

Regulatory measures help offset negative impacts; for instance, controls on the number of tourist activities and movement of visitors within protected areas can limit impacts on the ecosystem and help maintain the integrity and vitality of the site. Limits should be established after an in-depth analysis of the maximum sustainable visitor capacity. Furthermore, the variables and the constructs researched can be replicated to other destinations to seek valuable inputs for sustainable destination management elsewhere.

Study limitation

Besides the functional, practical applications, the study has some limitations. Besides having integral disadvantages of cross-sectional research, the respondents selected for the study were visitors on peak days with the highest tourist arrivals, thereby having experiences of a higher degree of environmental pollution and natural disorder. Furthermore, the research is limited to stakeholders’ perspectives instead of any scientifically generated data or mathematical or econometric model.

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Abasyn University, Peshawar, Pakistan

Qadar Bakhsh Baloch & Syed Naseeb Shah

Air University School of Management, Air University, Islamabad, Pakistan

Nadeem Iqbal

Department of Commerce, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan

Muhammad Sheeraz

IBA, Gomal University, Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan

Muhammad Asadullah

University of Sialkot, Sialkot, Pakistan

Sourath Mahar

Islamia College University Peshawar, Peshawar, Pakistan

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Contributions

QBB: conceptualization, methodology, writing—original draft. SNS: data curation and supervision. NI: visualization, editing, proofreading. MS: review and editing. MA: review and editing. SM: editing, data curation. AUK: review and editing.

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Correspondence to Nadeem Iqbal .

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Baloch, Q.B., Shah, S.N., Iqbal, N. et al. Impact of tourism development upon environmental sustainability: a suggested framework for sustainable ecotourism. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30 , 5917–5930 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-22496-w

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Received : 14 December 2021

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-22496-w

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How does new infrastructure impact the competitiveness of the tourism industry?——Evidence from China

1 Introduction

2 Analytical frameworks

3 Methodology

3.1.1 Infrastructure indicators.

3.2 Fixed effects regression model

3.3 Regional context and infrastructure foundation

4.1 Impact of infrastructure on overall tourism competitiveness

4.2 Diverse impact of new infrastructure

4.2.2 Impact of regional context.

4.2.3 Impact of investment scale.

5 Discussion and conclusion

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Methodology

Analysis and results

Suggested model for ecotourism framework

Conclusion, implications, and limitations of the study

Practical implications

Study limitation

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