Ya-Yen Sun

Dr Sun’s research addresses tourism sustainability, focusing on economic impacts and environmental footprinting. Her work on tourism economic impacts is to use the input-output modelling to provide quantitative estimates on jobs, income and GDP with respect to changes in national tourism policy, market development or special events and disasters. In addition, she also works on the environmental perspectives of travel behaviour, quantifying the tourism carbon footprint and tourism water footprint. She successfully constructed and analysed tourism impacts for individual countries (Taiwan, China, Japan, United States, and New Zealand) and provided the first detailed estimate of the global travel impact on greenhouse gas emissions. She worked closely with federal and local administers, including Statistics Norway, Indonesia Ministry of Finance, Taiwan Ministry of the Interior Construction Agency, Taiwan Forestry Bureau, and the US National Park Service. Her research projects include cases with national tourism carbon emission inventory, tourism employment vulnerability, tourism marketing programs, and national park management. Dr Sun has published in top academic journals including Nature Climate Change, Tourism Management, Journal of Travel Research and Journal of Sustainable Tourism. Before joining UQ from Taiwan in 2018, She had 9 consecutive research projects with the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) (equivalence to Australia Research Council), and 4 governmental grants. Dr Sun is currently the lead CI of the ARC Discovery Project that will set up the global tourism carbon emissions database and identify enablers for tourism decarbonization. Tourism carbon/water footprint assessment: Evaluate, trace and decompose the carbon footprint and water footprint of tourism at both macro and micro levels. Tourism economic impacts: Addresses how changes in national tourism policy, market development or disaster will impact GDP, employment, salary or tax.

[2026] Tourism in a warming world: who emits and who pays the price? Sun, Ya-Yen, Faturay, Futu and Zhou, Wanru (2026). Tourism in a warming world: who emits and who pays the price?. Climate Justice in Tourism. (pp. 24-39) Bristol, United Kingdom: Channel View Publications. doi: 10.21832/9781836460114-006 [2026] The influence of price inflation on emissions intensity. Gössling, Stefan and Sun, Ya-Yen (2026). The influence of price inflation on emissions intensity. Annals of Tourism Research, 120 104270, 104270-104270. doi: 10.1016/j.annals.2026.104270 [2026] Macro-scale decarbonisation of tourism: insights from Australia. Sun, Ya-Yen, Gossling, Stefan and Babakhani, Nazila (2026). Macro-scale decarbonisation of tourism: insights from Australia. Evidence-informed Sustainable Tourism. (pp. 1