ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Affairs and Policy
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1605039
This article is part of the Research TopicChallenges and Solutions in Forecasting and Decision-Making in Marine Economy and Management, Volume IIView all 10 articles
Over-tourism and Green Investments: Spatial MMQR Insights on China's Coastal Pollution and Carbon Emissions
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Business, Macau University of Science and technology, Taipa, Macau Region, China
- 2School of Business, China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing, China
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Controlling over-tourism has emerged as a pressing concern, attracting significant recent attention. Investigating this issue through the analysis of the impacts of marine green energy investment (MGEI), fintech (FT), and tourism concentration (TC) on carbon footprint (CF) and coastal water pollution (CWP) at tourist destinations is crucial. This study employs the Spatial Method of Moment Quantile Regression (SMMQR) model to examine the effects of these indicators on two environmental metrics in coastal regions of China, validated through Moran's I analysis, Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA) Cluster Maps, and robustness checks. Results reveal strong positive spatial autocorrelation, with dominant High-High (HH) clusters for both environmental indicators, concentrated in areas such as Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Sanya, indicating significant environmental pressures. TC and FT exacerbate CF (6.215–13.185 and 0.715–2.110) and CWP (5.210–10.145 and 2.045–4.570), whereas MGEI exhibits mixed CF (-3.078–4.042) and CWP impacts (-3.038–6.858), driven by spatial dependencies ranging from 0.275–0.312. These findings bolster recent research on tourism and FT's environmental impacts, expanding the analysis by incorporating spatial dynamics and investment, and pinpointing over-tourism risks in high-impact areas. The study proposes setting an over-tourism threshold to better manage this issue moving forward.
Keywords: Over-Tourism, spatial method of moment quantile regression, Tourism concentration, FinTech, marine green energy investment, Carbon Footprint, Coastal water pollution
Received: 02 Apr 2025; Accepted: 28 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sun, Wang, Cheng and Yang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Liwei Cheng, School of Business, Macau University of Science and technology, Taipa, 999078, Macau Region, China
Mengqi Yang, School of Business, China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing, China
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