The Empirical Research On Regional Disparity Of Tourism Development And Its Impact On Economic Growth

With the status of tourism industry in China from a new growth point of national economy as a strategic pillar industry, the study of relationship between tourism development and economic growth is gradually increasing in recent years. Most of mainstream research based on linear model from the country or region level to investigate the long-term equilibrium and causal relationship between the single market, and there are some differences among the conclusions. However, tourism development in our country is made up of two parts of the inbound tourism and domestic tourism, the single market studies cannot fully reflect the relationship between tourism development and economic growth in China. In addition, because there are differences in geographical conditions, the core of tourism attractions, economic development level, degree of traffic infrastructure. The phenomenon of unbalanced tourism development is more serious. Under different level of tourism development, the relationship between them is not maintained the same change trend, the difference of the impact of economic growth stage characteristics may exist. In this paper, linear model and nonlinear model is set up respectively to investigate the influence of tourism development to economic growth based on the above several considerations.In order to study the effect of China’s tourism development to economic growth. Firstly, this paper combed the domestic and foreign research on relationship between them; Secondly, we build a series of index to invest the current situation of the development of tourism industry, the country’s regional unbalance of tourism development and the relationship between tourism development and economic growth. Finally, based on Chinese provincial panel data from 1997 to 2013, we give some empirical studies by using common panel data model and a nonlinear panel threshold model.In this paper, according to analysis of the current situation of the tourism development in China: firstly, the overall trend of tourism development scale expanded year by year in our country, but the entry tourism development there is a downward trend; Secondly, the unbalance of regional tourism industry development in our country are gradually ease, but it is still serious, and the regional difference of the development of domestic tourism is the main contribution; Finally, the difference of tourism development between provinces is different, in details, east China is the largest, followed in the west and central is minimal. The study of the impacts of tourism development to economic growth show that, firstly, the three types of tourism development can significantly promote the economic growth in China, and the effect of inbound tourism development to economic growth is higher than domestic tourism; Secondly, the inbound tourism can effectively play the role in decreasing the gap of regional income; Finally, the impacts of three types on economic growth have heterogeneity with the different development level of tourism industry. The influence of inbound tourism development to economic growth is not significant in the regions of lower development level of inbound tourism. However, the influence of domestic tourism and overall tourism impact on economic growth is smaller or even insignificant in the regions of higher development level.