The Impact Of High-speed Rail On Urban Tourism Industry Agglomeration And Its Spatial Spillover Effects

The agglomeration of the regional tourism industry is a key measure to guide the largescale development of the tourism industry,improve the competitiveness of the regional tourism industry,and promote the transformation and upgrading of the regional tourism industry.As a link connecting tourist source and destination,transportation is an important location factor that affects the agglomeration of regional tourism industry.The reduction of transportation costs can effectively promote the change of the spatial pattern of the regional tourism industry.As a means of transportation that integrates the advantages of convenience,comfort,safety,environmental protection,and high transportation efficiency,the study of the impact of its opening and operation on the spatial agglomeration of the regional tourism industry has very important theoretical and realistic significance for optimizing the spatial structure of tourism and promoting the transformation and upgrading of the tourism economy.Scholars at home and abroad have accumulated a lot of valuable literature on the impact of high-speed rail on the development of tourism economy.Through presenting these papers,it can be found that domestic and foreign scholars have conducted comprehensive research on various aspects of tourism development such as the accessibility of tourism regions,tourism economy,and tourism spatial pattern.There are relatively few studies on the spatial agglomeration of regional tourism industry by high-speed rail,especially lack of quantitative analysis.Therefore,this paper selects data from 284 cities at prefecture level and above in my country,and builds an asymptotic difference-in-differences model and a spatial difference-indifferences model to deeply study the direct effects of high-speed rail networks on the agglomeration of tourism industries in cities along the route and the spatial spillover effect of tourism industry agglomeration from the time and space dimensions.This paper draws the following conclusions:(1)The opening of high-speed rail promotes the diffusion of tourism industry in cities along the route,and this diffusion effect will become greater as the year of high-speed rail opening increases.(2)The impact of high-speed rail opening on the level of tourism agglomeration in cities along the route is heterogeneous in five aspects: regional differences,city scale levels,center-peripheral cities,tourism resource endowment and differences in tourism agglomeration levels.Among them,(a)from the perspective of regional differences,the diffusion effect of high-speed rail opening on the tourism industry in the eastern region is much greater than that of the central and western regions,and the central region is greater than the western region;(b)from the perspective of the city scale,after the high-speed rail opening,the tourism industry tends to agglomerate from large cities,small and mediumsized cities to mega-cities.Mega-cities have more siphonic effects on large cities,small and medium-sized cities.(c)From the perspective of central-peripheral cities,with the opening of high-speed rail,tourism capital,talents,tourists and other production factors have shown a trend of spreading from central cities to peripheral cities.(d)From the perspective of tourism resource endowment,the opening of high-speed railway has a negative impact on the tourism income concentration level of cities with high tourism resource endowment,which indicates that with the opening of high-speed railway,the tourism industry in cities with rich tourism resources presents a trend of diffusion.(e)From the perspective of the level of tourism agglomeration,the diffusion effect of high-speed rail opening on the urban tourism industry shows an upward trend and then a downward trend as the level of tourism industry agglomeration increases.At the 50% point,The diffusion effect of high-speed rail opening is the greatest.(3)Under the weight matrix of spatial neighbors(W1)and the matrix of spatial geographic distance(W2),there is a significant negative spatial spillover effect in tourism industry agglomeration.Moreover,the absolute value of the spatial spillover coefficient under the spatial geographic distance matrix(W2)is greater than that under the spatial neighbor weight matrix(W1).(4)Under the two spatial weight matrices,the opening of high-speed rail has a significant negative spatial spillover direct effect and a significant negative spatial spillover indirect effect on the tourism industry agglomeration.Based on the above research conclusions,this article puts forward three policy recommendations: one is to correctly understand the effects of high-speed rail in regional tourism development;the other is to formulate regional tourism development policies based on the principle of meeting market demand;the third is to improve the public service system of tourist destinations.