Increasing population and over-consumption are placing unprecedented demands on agriculture and natural resources. The Earth is suffering from global warning and environmental destruction while our agricultural systems are concurrently degrading land, water, biodiversity, and climate on a global scale. For a sustainable future, green certification, e-commerce, and environment education can boost low-carbon economy with decreasing carbon emissions, but very few researches address them for the hotel industry. This research studies the performance impact of e-commerce, international hotel chain, local hotel chain, and green certification for carbon emission reductions of international tourist hotels of Taiwan. It reveals that, after a sufficiently long time, there is an improvement in the environmental and economic performance of the green-certified hotel group. In addition, it reveals that, as recommended by the operation policy, the international hotel chain group together with e-commerce has better performance than local hotel chain. It is also discussed how to sustain the continuing improvement in low-carbon performance of the hotel industry.
Keywords: Cross-border e-commerce; Data envelopment analysis (DEA); Environment education; Green certification; International tourist hotel (ITH); Low-carbon economy; Public health.