Asymmetric Spatial Spillover of Tourism Development in China Using a Two-Regime spatial Durbin Model

Abstract

The rapid growth of the tourism industry in China facilitates economic development, but meanwhile, it inevitably leads to uneven tourism development across cities and regions. This unbalanced tourism development also causes the unbalanced spatial distribution of tourism activities across cities, further inducing different levels of spatial spillovers generated from and received by individual cities. A comprehensive understanding of the spatial interaction mechanism of tourism development can facilitate efficient co-development of the tourism industry and regional economy. To capture the asymmetric spatial spillovers of tourism development, this study extended the standard spatial model into a two-regime spatial model to capture the different levels of spatial spillover to and from destinations at different levels of tourism demand, supply, and service sector development. The results revealed significant advantages enjoyed by popular destinations, cities with abundant supply or well-established service sectors in regional tourism development and indicated strong regional heterogeneity in these regime differences.