In the context of global warming, it is of great significance to analyze the impact of tourism development on regional carbon emissions regarding promotion of the sustainable development of tourism. Based on EKC Theory and related literatures, this paper tried to develop the EKC Theoretical Model by introducing tourism development variables and exploring the effects of tourism development on regional carbon emissions on the basis of the provincial panel data of China during 1995-2015. Meanwhile, we examined the effects of economic growth, opening degree of trade, unemployment rate, education level and urbanization level on carbon emissions. Results show that the inverse U-shaped EKC relationship exists between per capita CO_2 emissions and per capita GDP. In addition, the education level (-0.061), unemployment rate (-0.062) and opening degree of trade (-0.170) would be conductive to per capita CO_2 emissions reduction, among which the biggest contributor is the opening degree of trade, while the urbanization level (2.113) would tend to increase the per capita CO_2 emissions. Moreover, the development of tourism has a significant impact on per capita CO_2 emissions. To be specific, the fitting curve of tourist reception and per capita CO_2 emissions shows a positive "U"-type, while that of per capita tourism consumption and per capita CO_2 emissions is a typically inverted "U"-shaped curve. Furthermore, the level of tourism specialization has a significant effect on the peak and position of EKC. More specifically, the improvement of tourism specialization level will cause the EKC to move downward so that environmental pressures of economic development will be alleviated, and the turning point of the curve reflecting the relationship between tourism arrivals and per capita CO_2 emissions in the regions with high-level specialization of tourism is relatively higher than in other regions, while that of per capita tourism consumption and per capita CO_2 emissions is at lower levels. Finally, some policies for the low-carbon tourism economy are recommended.