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Since the beginning of the 21st century, accompanied by the tremendous achievements of China's economic growth is an increasingly severe income gap between the rich and the poor. Based on panel data from 2000 to 2018, this study systematically examined the relationship among transport infrastructure, economic growth, carbon emissions, and income inequality in China, using the panel vector autoregressive model estimated by the generalized method of moments. We further divided China into three regions to investigate the regional heterogeneity of these relationships. The results show a long‐run equilibrium relationship between transport infrastructure, economic growth, carbon emissions, and income inequality. Income inequality in the previous year significantly affects that in the current year positively. Whether at the national or regional level, economic growth affects income inequality negatively. For the national sample, the highway reduces income inequality, while the railway increases income inequality. For both the subsamples and the national sample, carbon emissions significantly increase income inequality and are the Granger test cause for income inequality. Furthermore, we discuss some of the possible mechanisms of these results. Our findings generate policy implications for reducing income inequality in regard to economic growth, transport infrastructure, and carbon emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A carbon tax policy has been advocated as an effective tool to develop low‐carbon economy in China. As one of the most influential and dynamic industries, Chinese tourism industry will foresee a new challenge under the carbon tax scenario. Given this background, this study explores the impacts of carbon tax on tourism development from the perspective of energy consumption by using computable general equilibrium modeling in China. Our findings clearly indicate that (a) the proportion of tourism energy consumption to national energy consumption in China will increase over time, (b) the impacts of carbon tax on China's tourism fossil energy consumption, electricity consumption, and energy intensity will become increasingly weak, (c) the impacts of a carbon tax on electricity use are greater than the impacts on fossil fuel consumption, and (d) the impacts of different carbon taxes on the levels of energy consumption and energy intensity will vary to a significant degree between the different tourism sectors. Our results are conducive to recognizing the changes of tourism energy consumption levels after levying a carbon tax. Furthermore, this paper also has a certain reference value to guide any relevant, subsequent studies in other destinations or economic sectors, worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of tourism development, decision‐makers are often confronted with multiple goals regarding the tourism economy, environment and society. Taking Tibet (China) as a case study, the current paper proposes an innovative methodology for quantifying the trade‐off between various tourism development goals, drawing on the Delphi method and goal programing. Our results indicate that Tibet's sustainable tourism development goals mainly consist of 10 subgoals and depend on nine decision‐making variables. Depending on whether the greatest priority is given to economic, social or environmental goals, the practical implications are markedly different. We further examine changes in the subgoals and decision variables under each priority scenario. Our results allow us to recognize the key objectives involved in sustainable tourism development. This study also provides a good research framework for weighing up the priority that should be assigned to different development goals and making relevant decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]