Efficiency of tourism development in China’s major cities under the constraint of PM2.5

Climate / weather factors are important factors for tourists to choose tourist destinations. With the public’s attention to the influence of haze, air quality will have a profound impact on the development of tourism in tourist destinations. Based on the Epsilon-based Measure (EBM) super-efficiency model and Global Malmquist–Luenberger index analysis method, this paper aims to study the tourism development efficiency of 58 major cities in China from 2001 to 2016 and analyse the total factor productivity in the development of urban tourism and the changing driving factors in consideration of the undesirable output of haze characterised by PM2.5 emission concentration. The study findings show that the overall efficiency of tourism development of 58 cities is not high in 2001–2016, but the tourism development efficiency of all cities is increasing year by year. Under the constraint of haze, the efficiency of urban tourism development is not directly proportional to the degree of urban development. The overall redundancy rate of each input index is slightly high, and the redundancy of PM2.5 emission concentration has a considerable effect on the efficiency of urban tourism development. The overall change trend in total factor productivity in the development of urban tourism is improved, mainly due to the improvement of technological progress factors. On this basis, the corresponding policy implications are concluded according to high-efficiency and high-quality development of tourism in 58 major cities.