Abstract: China cannot build a modern,civilized,harmonious and beautiful country without the integration and contribution of cultural tourism,while energy saving and emission reduction are important means to achieve the ambitious goal of “Carbon peaking,Carbon neutral” in the future.What are the links between the two,and what are the mechanisms of influence between them,are questions that have received a great deal of attention from all sectors of society.With the above considerations,the paper first clarified two influence mechanisms such as cultural tourism stimulating “pro-environmental behavior” and industrial structural transformation; then,based on the fixed-effects model,we used 2182 county panel data of 323 prefectures in 30 provinces,municipalities and autonomous regions of China from 2003 to 2017 to conduct an empirical study.The results show that：（1） the development of cultural tourism significantly reduces carbon dioxide emissions across China.（2） stimulating “pro-environmental behavior” of tourists is a direct mechanism for cultural tourism to generate emission reduction effects,while the transformation of industrial structure to cultural tourism and the restriction of the development of high pollution enterprises is indirect mechanisms.（3） the emission reduction effect of cultural tourism is more significant in the sample of prefecture-level cities and central and western regions.This study provides a new effective way to achieve goal of saving energy and reducing emissions,and establishes a key link between tourism,ecology,residents and enterprises,and also provides a reference for the development direction of tourism in China.

Key words: cultural tourism, carbon dioxide emissions, pro-environmental behavior, number of industrial enterprises, fixed-effect model