*Article* **Tourism Development, Carbon Emission Intensity and Urban Green Economic Efficiency from the Perspective of Spatial Effects**

**Xiaorong He 1, Jizhi Shi 1, Haichao Xu 1,\*, Chaoyue Cai 1,\* and Qiangsheng Hu <sup>2</sup>**

<sup>2</sup> College of Humanities and Arts, Hunan University of Finance and Economics, Changsha 410205, China

**\*** Correspondence: xuhaic@hunnu.edu.cn (H.X.); caichaoyue2021@hunnu.edu.cn (C.C.)

**Abstract:** In recent years, China has increasingly emphasized green development. Therefore, it is of theoretical and practical significance to study the green economic effect and carbon reduction effect of tourism development for the transformation of economic development. Using the superefficient EBM to measure the green economic efficiency of 280 cities from 2007–2019, we rely on the spatial Durbin model to explore the spatial spillover utility and nonlinear characteristic relationship of tourism development on green economic efficiency and carbon emission intensity and test the mediating effect of carbon emission intensity. The findings are as follows: (1) Under the exogenous shock test of the "low-carbon city" pilot policy, the spatial spillover effect of tourism development on urban green economic efficiency and carbon emission intensity is robust to spatial heterogeneity. (2) The spatial spillover effects of tourism development on the green economic efficiency and carbon emission intensity of cities show a nonlinear characteristic relationship of "U" and "M" shapes. After tourism development reaches a certain high level, the green economy effect and carbon emission reduction effect are significantly increased. (3) Carbon emission intensity has a significant mediating effect on the impact of tourism development on urban green economic efficiency.

**Keywords:** tourism development; green economy; carbon emissions; spillover effect; superefficient EBM
