In the fight against climate change, future policy directions in the transition toward a green travel- and tourism-based economy include improving tourism-derived CO₂ emission levels and guiding individual low-carbon behavior. In China, people tend to engage in outdoor adventure travel and cultural tourism in natural areas. However, limited information is available on the empirical evaluation of energy use and the CO₂ emissions associated with tourism in protected areas. The present study used a life cycle assessment to explore energy use and CO₂ emissions due to tourism and identify the factors driving low-carbon behavior. To these ends, survey data for the protected areas of the Qinling Mountains from 2014 to 2019 were used. The results showed that energy use and CO₂ emissions in various tourism sectors steadily increased from 2014 to 2019, primarily because of an increase in transportation activity. This study used data derived from the calculation of CO₂ emissions per tourist per trip to identify the various factors jointly contributing to the low-carbon behavior of tourists. These included a low-carbon attitude, low-carbon knowledge, environmental education, and policy reward. The broader implications of this study are that several emission reduction policy options are available to address the challenges inherent in sustainable tourism development and that these policies may be selected according to specific conditions. The low-carbon transformation of recreational facilities at travel destinations, policy rewards, and environmental education can regulate tourist behavior, holding the key to sustainable tourism development in protected areas.

In recent years, the government has adopted a series of measures to control air pollution, and the atmospheric environment quality has been improved. However, the environmental air quality in China is still not ideal. In this paper, constructs a regression model based on the EKC hypothesis, and builds a Tapio decoupling model based on the decoupling theory. The relationships between atmospheric pollutants and GDP are analyzed by using thses two methods. The atmospheric pollutants include SO₂, NOx and CO₂. In the regression model, the quantitative relationship between atmospheric pollutants and GDP is established, and the characteristics and differences between the pollutants and GDP are analyzed. Also, the decoupling relationship between atmospheric pollutants and economic growth is analyzed by using decoupling model. Then, the mutual verification of these different methods are launched. On this basis, the new situation of air pollution in China under the background of ecological civilization construction is analyzed. At last , policy suggestions are put forward.

With the rapid economic growth and deteriorated ecological environment in last decades, China is attaching great importance to sustainable development and environmental protection investment. The relationship between environmental protection investment and economic growth in China has been studied empirically based on panel data from 31 provinces in this paper. According to the official statistics in China, the environmental protection investment is indicated as total investment in treatment of environmental pollution (EI), which mainly comes down to three categories, i.e. investment in urban environment infrastructure facilities (I1), investment in treatment of industrial pollution sources (I2) and investments in environment components for new construction projects (I3). The problem that how EI and I1, I2, I3 contribute to GDP in the East, Middle and West China respectively is discussed with econometric and statistic methods. The findings mainly include: 1) The environmental investment (EI) and economic growth (GDP) have positive correlation significantly, and every 1% increase in EI will be accompanied by almost 0.7% growth in GDP(0.855% for the East region, 0.608% for the Middle region and 0.666% for the West region). More supportive policies should be made to promote environmental investment. 2) Different parts of EI (i.e. I1, I2, I3) contribute to GDP distinctively in the East, Middle and West China. I3 contributes to GDP growth most in the East China, I1 contributes most in the Middle, and I2 contributes most in the West. It is advisable to invest more in environment components for new construction projects in eastern provinces, more in urban environment infrastructure facilities in the Middle China, and more in treatment of industrial pollution sources in Western China.