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Balancing tourism growth with environmental pressures is an urgently needed complex issue. Tourism eco-efficiency (TEE) has become an important tool for addressing this challenge. We use complexity theory to understand the intricacies of improving TEE, focusing on data from 30 Chinese provinces from 2011 to 2019, and introduce a configurational perspective to this field. The following conclusions are drawn: Firstly, we innovatively propose the Government-Market-Public-Technical (GMPT) framework, which distills six conditions: government supervision, government attention, market competition, market liberalisation, public supervision, and digital level. Secondly, TEE has steadily increased, regional disparities have narrowed, and the spatial pattern has shifted from ‘multi-core’ dispersion to ‘block’ aggregation. Thirdly, unlike existing research on TEE, there is no symmetrical causal relationship between GMPT and TEE. Moreover, a single GMPT condition is not necessary for high or low TEE levels. We also innovatively summarise the combinatorial paths. Four types of condition combinations can produce high-level TEE, including Market liberalization Tech Driven, Government-Market Dual Interaction Tech-Driven, Government-Public Dual Interaction Tech-Driven, and Government-Market-public-Tech Driven Coordinated Type. We identify three types of deficiency elements that impede TEE enhancement. This study provides important theoretical and practical insights for promoting eco-tourism and achieving high-quality tourism development under sustainable conditions.
Jiang et al. (Sat,) studied this question.