The impact of air quality on China's inbound tourism based on the heterogeneity of tourists' risk perception

Abstract

This study employs a panel econometric model to assess and examine the relationship between inbound tourism to China and air quality, using data on air quality and inbound tourism at the provincial level in China from 2013 to 2017. It also considers how travelers perceive risk. According to the findings, there has been an increase in foreign tourists visiting China since 2013. However, the air quality index's representation of domestic air quality is not encouraging. Our studies using the fixed effect model demonstrate that domestic air quality has a considerable beneficial impact on the number of inbound tourists, which is still strong when utilizing the mixed effect and random effect models; in comparison to northern China, the impact of air quality in southern China is more clear. Our studies demonstrate that the ongoing decline in China's inbound tourism scale in recent years is strongly correlated with the quality of the country's air, which is influenced by each visitor's personal preferences. In order to improve China's reputation in the global tourism market, the report concludes by outlining solutions to address this impact. These methods include maintaining the promotion of environmental governance while also tightly integrating tourism marketing.