| As one of national strategic pillar industries for China’s economy,development of tourism industry helps not only promote economic development,but also improve the life quality of residents and tourists.The tourism industry has seen a rapid growth,which leading to the position as one of China’s strategic pillar industries more stable in recent years.Its total revenue made great contribution to national GDP from 3.8%in 2010 to 6.7% in 2019;the value added of tourism and related industries increased from 2,752.4 billion RMB in 2014 to 4,498.9 billion RMB in 2019,with an average annual growth rate of 5.0%,and the proportion of value added in GDP increased from4.33% in 2014 to 4.56% in 2019.However,with the upgrading of the consumption structure,tourism industry can not balance supply and demand efficiently.In order to match the demand side,the tourism industry must reform from supply side,which will promote its high-quality development.At present,the industry is turning from high-speed development stage to high-quality development stage.The integration of culture and tourism is conducive to promote the high-quality development of both culture and tourism industry.At the current new stage,the tourism industry faces the following challenges: a)How to take advantage of the opportunity of culture and tourism integration to help achieve its transformation;b)How to shift quickly from high-speed development to high-quality development.Facing these urgent challenges,cultural public attractions,as the core part of tourism industry,plays a leading role to realize their own high-quality development and to facilitate tourism industry’s transformation.As such,the present research mainly focuses on how to achieve the high-quality development of cultural public attractions.In order to reach that goal,it needs to know the cost efficiency status of cultural public attractions firstly,and then explore how does the current management system,heterogeneous resources,or factor input structure have an impact on the cost efficiency of cultural public attractions.Based on the above facts,the current study puts an emphasis on exploring the mechanism of cost efficiency of cultural public attractions in China,and trying to solve the following practical problems: a)What is the cost efficiency level of cultural public attractions in China? b)What kind of characteristics does the cost efficiency show? c)What are the main constraints on the inefficiency of cost efficiency? d)What factors affect the improvement of cost efficiency? e)What roles do management system and heterogeneous resources play in the mechanism? f)How does the current factor input structure influence the cost efficiency? The research on these issues will help to deeply understand the mechanism of cost efficiency and help promote the high-quality development of tourism industry by optimizing resources allocation.To solve the above questions,the main contents of the research are arranged as follows:In the first chapter,the research question is presented by describing practical background of cultural public attractions and current status of related research.Theoretical and practical implication are further discussed.In order to clarify the scope of the study,concepts of related academic terms are defined.Then technology roadmap is applied to sketch the research framework.Innovation is also expounded.Chapter two begins from literature review and theoretical basis,which help lay a solid foundation for the subsequent research.Literature review consists of cost and cost efficiency of cultural public attractions,summarizes the exsisting status of related research,and then presents the gap between the study and previous research.It explores impacts of both internal and external factors to cost efficiency of cultural public attractions,under considering cost of inputs and attributes of multi-functional outputs.In the third chapter,the paper firstly outlines the current status of cultural public attractions,then summarizes the multi-functional attributes of outputs of cultural public attractions based on the resource-based theory and exsiting research,confirms the multiple outputs of attractions by using content analysis,and compares the importance of each function to managers among different types of cultural public attractions.Thus,functions of cultural public attractions were divided into six categories: protection,research,exhibition,education,entertainment and communication.Moreover,the input-output index system reflecting the cost efficiency of cultural public attractions was built.By using DEA model,it was found that protection,research,exhibition and education are the most important four dimensions of the six outputs through comparing cost efficiency.Chapter four evaluates cost efficiency of cultural public attractions by using three-stage DEA model and decribes the characteristics on regional scale.The heterogeneity of management system was analysed.Also,the output of service quality was added into the evaluation.It was found that the lower technical efficiency inhibits the improvement of the cost efficiency.There are significant differences between attractions under different management systems,which meaning that the technical efficiency of non-state-owned attractions is significantly higher than that of state-owned attractions.The regional characteristics show that the cost efficiency,technical efficiency and allocative efficiency of attractions are higher in eastern region than that in the central and western regions.In terms of the evaluation of service quality,it was found that managers pay more attention to service quality compared with the number of tourists.The fifth chapter explores the relationship between resources and technical efficiency of attractions on the basis of the consensus that heterogeneous resources are the main source of competitiveness and attractiveness of cultural public attractions.Then the relationship between scale and scale efficiency of attractions in different stages of return to scale was also tested.The results show that the heterogeneous resources of attractions have significant impacts on pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency,resulting in the insignificant impact on the whole technical efficiency,while the resources have a positively significant impact on the technical efficiency of non-state-owned attractions.The larger of the number of relics resources and the greater amount of government funding,the more conducive to improve the technical efficiency of non-state-owned attractions.Scale increase in cultural attractions in different stages of return to scale would improve scale efficiency.By outlining the factor input structure status of cultural attractions from the industry view,the sixth chapter found that factor input structure experienced a descending trend in the recent years.And the structure of state-owned attractions is higher than that of non-state-owned attractions.Tobit model further explored the impact of factor input structure on allocative efficiency,it was found that the structure has a significantly negative impact on allocative efficiency of sate-owned attractions,while the impact is not significant for the non-state-owned attractions.There are four innovations in the current research: First,based on the resource-based theory,the paper demonstrates the multi-functional attributes of cultural public attractions and constructs the input-out index system reflecting cost efficiency.In the past,relevant research pay little attention to the multi-functional attributes of cultural public attractions,but put emphasis on the exhibition function(measured by the number of tourists)and education function(measured by the number of educational activities).With the help of resource-based theory and previous research,the paper summarizes and verifies the functions of cultural public attractions by using content analysis,which includes protection,research,exhibition,education,entertainment and communication.The multi-functional theoretical framework and input-out index are more theoretical,comprehensive and innovative.Further empirical analysis showed that different type of cultural public attraction pays attention to various functions.Protection,research,exhibition and education contribute more to cost efficiency than entertainment and communication functions.Second,previous research focus on quantitative indicators of outputs in cultural public attractions,neglecting the importance of service quality.The present research used “visitor satisfaction” as one of the measurement indicators of exhibition function output.It was found that the cost efficiency is higher than using the number of tourists indicator due to the great improvement of technical efficiency,reflecting that managers pay more attention to service quality than the number of visitors.Third,previous studies focus on the external factors that affect the cost efficiency of cultural public attractions,lacking internal factors,such as heterogeneous resources owned by attractions.Since resource heterogeneity if one of the main reasons for competitiveness,it is necessary to explore the relationship between resources and technical efficiency.There are differences between pure technical efficiency and allocative efficiency,leading to the insignificance of the relationship in state-owned attractions.But the resources have a significantly positive impact on the non-state-owned attractions.Fourth,previous studies on efficiency under different management systems are lacking,therefore,the present paper explores the difference of cost efficiency between state-owned and non-state-owned attractions.It was found that the management system has a significant impact on the cost efficiency of cultural public attractions.Emperical results show that heterogeneous resources had no significant impact on technical efficiency of state-owned attractions,but it was significant in non-state-owned attractions.Factor input structure has significantly negative impact on allocative efficiency for state-owned attractions,but it was insignificant for non-state-owned attractions.These results would provide specific suggestions for government to improve the cost efficiency of cultural public attractions. |
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