In order to foster students’ development and enhance the training quality within tourism programs at universities, this study aims to investigate the relationships among tourism students’ professional identity, academic self-efficacy, learning engagement, and university support. Professional identity refers to learners’ recognition and understanding of their study programs and is viewed as a dynamic, progressive process consisting of professional cognition, professional emotion, and professional appraisal. Data were collected from 333 tourism students studying at Chinese universities. They were analyzed through SPSS and SmartPLS. The results revealed that there is no significant correlation between students’ professional cognition and learning engagement. However, students’ professional emotions and professional appraisals positively influence learning engagement. Moreover, all three dimensions of professional identity exhibit positive effects on students’ academic self-efficacy. Additionally, students’ academic self-efficacy demonstrates a positive impact on learning engagement, and university support is associated with increased learning engagement and academic self-efficacy. This study contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the learning experience of tourism students and aims to facilitate the advancement of tourism education through cultivating students’ professional identity towards tourism and developing students’ career commitment in the tourism industry. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Under the background of higher education reform, undergraduate tourism students’ professional identity may play an important role in affecting students’ learning engagement and the sustainable development of tourism higher education. Data were collected from 551 Chinese undergraduate tourism students to investigate the potential relationships between professional identity and learning engagement. Based on the theory of social identity, professional identity is perceived as a progressive, dynamic process including professional cognition, professional appraisal, and professional emotion. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM), and the findings confirmed that professional identity was in positive correlation with employee engagement. Furthermore, the results showed that professional cognition has positive influences on professional appraisal, professional emotion, and learning engagement, and professional appraisal has positive influences on professional emotion and learning engagement. In addition, the mediating effects of professional appraisal and professional emotion between professional cognition and learning engagement were analyzed, respectively. This study contributes to the understanding of the impacts of tourism students’ professional identity on learning engagement. Both theoretical and practical implications are provided.

In the context of ecological priority and green development strategy, accelerating the upgrading of tourism structure and promoting the development of ecotourism is an important guarantee to achieve green and low-carbon economic growth and high-quality development. On the basis of constructing comprehensive evaluation indicators of tourism development (TD) and green development efficiency (GDE), this study analyzed the impulse response relationship between TD and GDE and the impact effect of TD on GDE in the Yangtze River Delta region from 2000–2018. Findings showed that: (1) During the study period, TD generally exhibited a W-shaped fluctuating upward trend and GDE showed a staggered evolution of upward and downward fluctuations, while both regional gaps of TD and GDE continued to decrease. (2) Most cities had made a leap from low to medium, high, and higher levels of tourism development, with tourism development levels decreasing along the Yangtze River basin to the north and south of the delta. The overall green development efficiency was relatively low, showing a spatial pattern of high value in the southern delta and low value in the northwest delta. (3) There was a one-way Granger causality of TD on GDE, and the impact of TD on GDE showed a significant positive cumulative effect. (4) TD exhibited a significant inverted U-shaped impact on GDE. The economic development level and government intervention had a significant positive impact on GDE. The proportion of secondary industry, energy consumption intensity, and foreign direct investment had a significant negative driving effect on GDE. While the impact of environmental regulation on GDE was insignificant positive. This study has great practical significance to alleviate the problems of urban resources and environment, and to realize a green economy and high-quality life.

Under the influence of tourism and globalization, heritage production presents a new landscape. As a crucial framework for interpreting heritage, Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD) has profound significance in discussing its practice characteristics in this context. Taking cities along the Jiangsu–Zhejiang section of the Grand Canal as a case study and drawing upon policy text, this study explores the practice characteristics of AHD in the tourism context. Results indicate that the thematic practices of AHD encompass protection and management, ecological construction, cultural production and inheritance, touristification, infrastructure and services, and marketing and cooperation, forming a clustering pattern with touristification as the central theme. The spatial characteristics manifest as multi-scale practices ranging from global to regional to local, each corresponding to diverse thematic characteristics. This study deepens the understanding of AHD in tourism and advances the research progress of heritage tourism. It also provides practical references for the utilization of urban heritage and the management of heritage tourism.

Sustainable tourism requires preventing the environmental impact (EI) of tourist activities. The predictive assessment of EI at an early stage is conducive to the prevention of EI caused by tourism. To acquire adequate insight into the EI of planned tourist activities and promote EI prevention in advance, this study integrates the Relative Risk Model with the Rapid Impact Assessment Matrix to develop an integrated model that predictively assesses and compares the EIs from different contributors along the EI formation path. To demonstrate the model, a study was conducted in the Earth’s Third Pole National Park. The results of this study show that (1) this model allows for the clear identification and comparison of the characteristics of EI formation across different tourist activities. This allows for defining a priority order for developing different tourist activities in terms of environmental conservation, thereby identifying relatively suitable activities. (2) In different stages of EI formation, the main contributors to EI can be discerned by this model, thereby defining the key targets of EI prevention in the whole EI process. (3) The EIs that different receptors carry can be compared using this model, thereby selecting the main receptors carrying higher EI as principal protected objects. In summary, in tourism development, assessing EI with this method helps predict the EI from different contributors, guide sustainable tourism development, and promote environmental care at an early stage.

Learning engagement among university students is a critical predictor of academic success. This study, drawing on responses from 333 questionnaires completed by Chinese tourism students, employs the fsQCA method to construct a configurational impact model of learning engagement, exploring the paths and mechanisms of its influence. The study finds that learning engagement among tourism students is shaped by the combined influence of internal and external factors, with internal factors—such as professional cognition, professional evaluations, professional emotions, and academic self-efficacy—playing a foundational and central role. External factors, such as the university environment, provide additional influence, though their impact varies depending on the type of learning engagement. A high level of learning engagement is associated with two distinct configurational paths, identified as the endogenous model and the endogenous–exogenous promotion model. Having positive professional evaluations and a strong professional identity is found to have a significant positive impact on students’ academic engagement. Conversely, a low level of learning engagement follows three distinct configurational paths, collectively termed the endogenous suppression model, in which a lack of professional emotions and low academic self-efficacy are key inhibitors of academic engagement. Theoretical and practical implications based on the research findings are also discussed.