Impacts of the integral development of agriculture and tourism on agricultural eco-efficiency: a case study of two river basins in China

Abstract The integral development of agriculture and tourism heavily depends on natural resources, especially agricultural resources, and it also may contribute to the sustainability of agriculture. The sustainability of agriculture is usually measured by the agricultural eco-efficiency. The main objective of this paper is to demonstrate the impact of the agriculture and tourism integration on agricultural eco-efficiency, so as to reflect the role of the agriculture and tourism integration on promoting agricultural sustainability. Applying panel data of 19 provinces in Yangtze River Basin and Yellow River Basin in China from 2008 to 2019, this paper uses a PSTR model to demonstrate the impact of agriculture and tourism integration on agricultural eco-efficiency and its mechanisms. It is found that in the study area, the integration of agriculture and tourism can contribute to improvements in agricultural eco-efficiency, and when levels of integration are high, the promotional effect is enhanced. However, impacts vary among different regions to some extent. In terms of influencing mechanisms, inputs of agricultural labor, sown crop area, effective irrigation area and other factors decrease with continuous improvements of integration. The input of pesticides, fertilizers and other factors does not decrease in the initial stage of integration but undergoes a rapid decrease after crossing a threshold value. And it demonstrates that the integration of agriculture and tourism is beneficial for improving the agricultural eco-efficiency, so that it will contribute to agricultural sustainability. Meanwhile, this paper offers a new research perspective for discovering effects of agriculture and tourism integration, providing implications for formulating regional policies for the integration.