STUDY ON THE ECOLOGICAL EFFICIENCY AND ITS TEMPORAL DYNAMIC EVOLUTION OF CHINA’S CRUISE TOURISM FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF CARBON FOOTPRINT

China has grown rapidly to be Asian maximum cruise economic market (Green Book of Cruise Industry, 2018).To facilitate cruise economic growth and harmonious coexistence with ecological environment, this paper proposes a new perspective of the ecological efficiency and computes carbon footprint of the cruise tourism in China from 2009 to 2017.The results show a relatively low level of ecological efficiency in nearly nine years, the average ecological efficiency of cruise tourism is CNY 67.99/kg.In these nine years, ecological efficiency of cruise tourism within four years from 2011 to 2012 and from 2016 to 2017 is lower than the average and ecological efficiency within two years from 2009 to 2010 and from 2013 to 2015 is higher than the average, ecological efficiency within four years from 2013 to 2015 and 2017 is close to the average.Ecological efficiency has dropped continuously in 2011, but the overall carbon emissions and related carbon footprint of cruise tourism show the trend of rapid growth.It is necessary to explore a new way to develop cruise tourism, change the development mode of cruise tourism, rebuild a balance between industry booming and ecosystem by reducing resource consumption and pollution discharge, and further enhance ecological efficiency of cruise tourism.