Study On Evaluation Of Regional Tourism Efficiency And Spatial Differences In Gansu Province

In recent years, with rapid development of tourism, it has become a new growth point of stimulating economic development, and shows great potential for development. The difference of regional tourism efficiency has become one of the core issues that have been widespread attention by the government, academia and the public. However, due to many factors including the infrastructure conditions, resource endowment, economic development level, industry policy and so on, the development of tourism economic imbalance has become a common phenomenon. In-depth analysis of the regional differences of tourism economic and its causes is important for rationally developing and utilizing the tourism resources,optimizing the allocation of tourism production factors and narrowing the differences of regional tourism economic.Based on the data envelopment analysis(DEA) and Malmquist Index(MI),the present study aims to analyze the differences of regional tourism efficiency from the aspect of time evolution and space structure, with 14 cities of Gansu province as research subjects. When analyzing the time evolution of regional tourism efficiency from 2003 to 2012,the study chooses the number of travel agency and scenic area as input indicators, total number of domestic tourists and total income of domestic tourism as output ones. The results show that:(1)Based on the technical efficiency from 2003 to 2012,the 14 regions can be divided into three levels: the higher technical efficiency includes Lanzhou, Jinchang, Baiyin and Qingyang; the medium technical efficiency includes Tianshui, Jiuquan, Dingxi, Longnan, Linxia and Gannan; the lower technical efficiency includes Jiayuguan, Wuwei, Zhangye and Pingliang.(2)In the mass Jiuquan, Lanzhou and Pingliang are in the stage of invariable and decreasing returns to scale, and other regions are in the stage of increasing and invariable returns to scale in most of the time.(3)The evolvement trends of tourism efficiency are different from each region with significant spatial differences. Only Tianshui’s MI value is greater than 1 for ten years and the tourism efficiency continues to improve.(4) The regions in Gansu province are divided into three types. TypeⅠincludes 6 regions, type Ⅲ includes 3 regions, and type Ⅳ includes 5 regions.(5)Finally, this paper analyzes the causes of the differences in regional tourism efficiency from the aspects of tourism resources, traffic conditions, and will provide some ideas and inspiration with a view to sustainable, healthy and stable development of tourism industry in Gansu province.