Exploring the relationship between the tourism carbon environment and high-quality economic development in the Yellow River Basin is a national strategy to meet the realistic requirements of the goal of “Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutral”. It is also conducive to the realization of “Ecological Protection and High-quality Development Strategy in the Yellow River Basin”. Therefore, based on the calculation of tourism’s carbon emission efficiency and the evaluation of the tourism economy’s high-quality development, the interaction mechanism between them was observed. The results showed that, firstly, the tourism carbon emission efficiency of the Yellow River Basin increased slightly from 2010 to 2019, with an average of 0.9782, which was at a medium efficiency level. Secondly, the tourism economy’s high-quality development level is rising, and the speed of development is fast, especially in western provinces. Thirdly, there is a parasitic relationship between the two, but in each province, there is a positive or negative asymmetric symbiotic relationship. The tourism economy’s high-quality development has a greater impact on the efficiency of tourism’s carbon emissions. Fourthly, energy and capital input, as well as coordination and innovation factors, are important driving factors of the symbiosis between the two, among which the role of labor input was gradually revealed, and the impact factor experienced the changing process of “sharing-coordination-innovation”. This study provides a theoretical framework and evaluation methods for evaluating and analyzing the relationship between tourism’s carbon emission efficiency and the tourism economy’s high-quality development, and it provides data support and policy suggestions for the real development.

Mega-events, as a strategic approach taken by entrepreneurial governments, have the ability to transform the image of a city. This study explores mega-events and their relationship to urban development by developing a coupling coordination degree model and using the official statistics of Qionghai, China, from 2010 to 2015. The results of this study show that the dynamic of coordination between mega-events and urban development is a classical S-shaped growth curve. In the coupling system, this study also reveals that relevance index and the economy, as sub-indicators, make significant contributions to mega-events and urban development, respectively. Finally, the researchers concluded that the international large-scale events can significantly promote the urban development in host cities. This study reveals theoretical issues and practical implications for policy makers and event managers to achieve integrated and coordinated development between mega-events and urban development.

Regional integration, as an essential measurement for solving unbalanced and uncoordinated regional development, plays an important role in achieving regional sustainable development. In this study, we aimed to construct a systematic research framework to facilitate the development of regional integration. Using 31 prefecture-level cities in the urban agglomeration in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River (MYR-UA) as case sites, this study applied box plots, kernel density estimation, GIS visualization tools, Markov chains, and geographic detectors to reveal the dynamic spatiotemporal evolution and factors influencing regional integration from 2009 to 2018. The results indicate that the level of regional integration and its subsystem development is suboptimal in MYR-UA; the temporal characteristic shows an upward fluctuating trend, and the spatial distribution shows remarkable spatial correlation and clustering characteristics. Additionally, we found that the level of regional integration development in MYR-UA has both “path dependence” and “self-locking” effects, and the spatial lag type has a crucial impact on the degree of regional transfer stability. The dominant factors affecting regional integration development include the GDP per capita, economic openness, industrial structure, proportion of education expenditure in fiscal expenditure, urbanization rate, proportion of environmental investment in fiscal expenditure, population density, capital flow, information flow, and technology flow. Finally, based on the findings of this study, policy recommendations for promoting regional integration are proposed.

As part of the modern transport infrastructure, high-speed railways (HSRs) have been considered an important factor affecting eco-efficiency (EE). This study used multisource remote sensing and statistical data from 185 counties representing urban agglomerations in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River (UAMRYR) in China from 2009 to 2018. The study integrated ArcGIS analysis, the Super-SBM (super slack-based measure) model, and the DSPDM (dynamic spatial panel Durbin model) to explore the spatial effects of HSRs on EE. The results showed that the coordinates of the interannual centers of gravity for EE and HSRs both fell in the same county, possessing similar parameter values for the standard deviation elliptical, a negative spatial mismatch index, and obvious spatial mismatch characteristics. In different spatially dislocated areas, the spatial effects of HSRs on EE are variable. Overall, the short-term effects are more intense than the long-term effects, and both the long-term and short-term effects are dominated by the effects of spatial spillover. A new perspective is proposed to explore the green development effects of HSRs, with a view to providing policy implications for the enhancement of EE and the planning of HSRs.

Digital transformation is reshaping tourism markets by enabling destinations to communicate with prospective visitors, strengthen their online reputation, and present distinctive destination experiences through digitally connected environments. This study examines the relationships among social media marketing efforts, e-reputation, perceived authentic destination experience, destination image, and destination behavioral intention (DBI) in emerging destinations along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Grounded in the Stimulus–Organism–Response (S-O-R) framework and Destination Image Theory, the study conceptualizes destination image as an internal cognitive-affective evaluative state linking digital, reputational, and experiential destination-related stimuli with behavioral intention. Data were collected from 385 respondents familiar with CPEC destinations and analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results indicate that social media marketing efforts, e-reputation, and perceived authentic destination experience are positively associated with destination image, which is in turn positively associated with destination behavioral intention. Statistically significant indirect associations through destination image are also consistent with the theoretically proposed mediating pathways. Importance–Performance Map Analysis further identifies perceived authentic destination experience as the relatively most important antecedent among the examined exogenous constructs within the estimated model, while e-reputation exhibits comparatively lower performance and may therefore warrant managerial attention. The study contributes to digital destination-marketing research by integrating digital communication, socially generated reputation, experiential authenticity, and destination image within a common evaluative framework in an emerging tourism context. Although sustainable tourism development was not directly measured, the findings may inform sustainability-oriented destination management when visitor interest is considered alongside environmental capacity, cultural preservation, community interests, and long-term destination-development objectives.