Analyzing the Environmental Footprint and Its Determinants in China: An Integrated Assessment of the EKC and Pollution Haven Hypotheses

This study provides a comprehensive empirical investigation into the determinants of China's environmental footprint from 1990 to 2023, with a specific focus on testing the Pollution Haven Hypothesis (PHH) and the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) in the context of travel and tourism. Employing the EKC framework, we analyze the dynamic impacts of eco-tourism, economic growth, energy consumption, trade openness, and foreign direct investment on ecological degradation. The methodology involves advanced statistical tests to establish the existence of a long-run equilibrium relationship among the variables. The findings confirm an inverted U-shaped EKC relationship between travel and tourism development and the environmental footprint, indicating that the sector initially exacerbates environmental degradation but, beyond a certain threshold of economic development, contributes to its amelioration. Further results indicate that energy utilization and trade openness significantly intensify the environmental footprint. Crucially, foreign direct investment is found to escalate environmental degradation, thereby providing robust empirical support for the Pollution Haven Hypothesis in the Chinese context. Consequently, this study recommends that policymakers prioritize the transition towards sustainable tourism models, accelerate the diversification of the energy mix towards cleaner sources, and strategically channel foreign direct investment into less polluting service sectors.