Greening Tourism: How Environmental Regulation Policies Shape Urban Tourism Development in China

The increasing importance of ambient air quality in tourism has brought urban tourism development’s effective promotion at the policy level into sharp focus. This paper leverages panel data from 276 Chinese cities at or above the prefectural level, spanning from 2007 to 2022 By considering the Ambient Air Quality Standards as a quasi-natural experiment, the study applies a difference-in-difference method to empirically assess the impact of this policy on tourism development, and its transmission mechanisms. The findings underscore that environmental regulation policies significantly contribute to advancing tourism development in cities. Moreover, the policy’s effects are found to vary according to geographic location, development scale, and economic region of the cities. Environmental regulation policies affect urban tourism through technological, scale, and structural mechanisms. These empirical insights lend substantial support to the broader implementation of environmental regulation policies across the nation. They also provide crucial guidance for the formulation of tourism development strategies that emphasize environmental regulation, both within China and globally.