Greening for growth: the impact of ecological garden city initiatives on sustainable tourism development

Tourism, as an important component of sustainable consumption, plays a significant role in stimulating market vitality, promoting cleaner patterns of development, and supporting broader sustainability goals. Understanding tourism growth within the context of environmental governance is therefore essential for advancing sustainable development. This study investigates the impact of the Ecological Garden City (EGC) initiative, an environmental incentive policy aimed at improving urban ecological quality, on tourism development. Using a time-varying difference-in-differences (DID) model, we find that the EGC policy significantly promotes local tourism development, with stronger effects observed in cities with higher ecological quality, better air conditions, and more developed transportation systems. Beyond stimulating tourism growth, the policy also appears to strengthen sustainable consumption through enhanced public environmental attention and stronger government environmental commitment. At the same time, the results do not support the existence of a universal ‘Matthew effect.’ Rather than systematically widening regional inequality, the spillover effect appears limited and conditional, depending on specific urban and spatial contexts. Overall, the EGC initiative provides useful policy evidence for aligning environmental incentives with sustainable tourism development.