The rapid economic development of China and the industrial shift from its eastern to western provinces have resulted in significant negative impacts on the environment. Recently, tourism has emerged as an alternative for economic and environmental development, but it is a double-edged sword. Without the required measures to protect environment, the opportunity cost of tourism is environmental degradation. The western part of China holds a significant advantage for the development of travel and tourism (T&T), due to One Belt One Road (OBOR), unique ancient culture and spectacular variety of natural scenic spots. This region is among the less explored and less developed, but important, parts of China. Taking this point into consideration, this paper aims to examine the impact of tourism on the environmental pollution of five provinces located in the heart of OBOR over the period of 1991–2016. To explore this link, we used the fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) approach and Gregory-Hansen test for robustness check. We applied the Zivot-Andrews unit root test to deal with structural breaks in data. Our results confirm a negative impact of tourism on environment for Ningxia, Qinghai, Gansu, and Shanxi. However, tourism improves the environmental quality of Xinjiang. The negative impact of energy consumption and GDP growth is significant than tourism. Our findings suggest that the relationship varies for different provinces in the same region depending on the specific provincial features and government policies. Furthermore, tourism development has great potential to improve the economic and environmental sustainability in these provinces.

The aim of this paper is to reinvestigate the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows on welfare or poverty reduction in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) economies. We used FDI net inflows per capita and the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Index (HDI) as the principal variables ranging from 1990 to 2014. Our analyses confirm the positive and strongly significant relationship between FDI net inflows and poverty reduction in Asia. However, it indicates significant differences between South Asia and Southeast Asia. Generally, we find that FDI has a greater impact on welfare in SAARC countries than in ASEAN countries. Our results hold true for both HDI and real gross domestic product (GDP), and are shown to be robust using both panel and pool model specifications.

In order to realize "double carbon" target in agriculture and high-quality development of the rural economy in China, it is crucial to study the regional differences and spatial spillover effects of agricultural carbon emissions (ACE). This paper measures ACE using panel data of 31 Chinese provinces from 2005 to 2020, examines the spatio-temporal evolution characteristics，the convergence of agricultural carbon emissions, compares and analyzes regional differences, and investigates the spatial correlation and spatial spillover effects. The study found that: (1) Total agricultural carbon emissions over the research period exhibit a rising and then reducing trend, the spatial distribution of total agricultural carbon emissions is described as high in east-central and low in west. The gap of agricultural carbon emissions is gradually declining in the east, and will eventually reach their respective steady-state levels in the west and northeast. (2) There is a strong spatial interprovincial link of ACE, which has a beneficial knock-on effect on the convergence of adjacent provinces. (3) Agricultural industrial structure, urbanization level, the size of the agricultural labor force, and the intensity of the agricultural machinery input all directly affect ACE in this province and indirectly affect ACE in adjacent provinces, with the exception of the negligible coefficient of economic development level on ACE. Hence, pertinent policy suggestions are put out to serve as a guide for reducing ACE.

The stable growth of an economy is based on the coordination between environmental protection and economic development. Environmental regulation may affect energy efficiency because of its function of correcting energy consumption externalities. This paper uses the SBM model and Tobit model to explore the impact on and pathways of environmental regulations of energy efficiency in 30 provincial-level administrative regions in China and explains temporal and regional heterogeneity. The findings suggested that the environmental regulation in all provinces is continuously strengthened and the energy efficiency in eastern China is relatively higher. There is a positive effect of environmental regulation on energy efficiency and there is a temporal and spatial heterogeneity. Environmental regulation affects energy efficiency through green technology innovation, industrial structure upgrading, energy structure transformation and other transmission paths, and its influence mechanism on energy efficiency also has regional heterogeneity. The policy suggestions are: further enhance the intensity of environmental regulation, refine supporting safeguards and implement differentiated environmental regulation measures.