The Willingness to Carbon Offsets and Its Influencing Factors of the Catering Owners in Forest Tourism Based on Boosted Regression Tree—A Survey on 159 Samples in 10 National Forest Parks in Jiangxi

Abstract

Climate and environment issues mainly caused by global carbon emissions are becoming more and more prominent. As a major implementer of carbon emissions, the catering operators’ willingness to use energy and carbon offset plays an important role in the low carbon development of forest tourism. Based on the effective questionnaire survey of 159 catering operators in 10 national forest parks in Jiangxi Province, this study analyzed the willingness of catering operators to carbon offsets and its influencing factors by the Boosted Regression Tree model. The results show that 20 factors such as means of carbon offset affect the catering operators’ willingness of carbon offset, and the contribution rate of each variable factor was calculated, among which 12 factors affect more than 85%; the operators’ perception of tourism ecological environment, the means of carbon offset, the convenience of carbon offset, the operator's carbon offset motive, the operating income, and the degree of education are positively correlated with the carbon offset willingness, in line with the null hypothesis. The carbon emissions are adverse to climate change. The perception of influence is negatively correlated with the willingness to carbon offset. This study provides a decision-making reference for the establishment of a carbon offset mechanism for forest tourism.