Evaluation of the impact of the tourism nation promotion project on inbound tourists in Japan: a difference-in-differences approach

ABSTRACT

This study quantitatively evaluates the impact of the Tourism Nation Promotion Project on tourism demand. Data were obtained from Japan Tourism Agency’s quarterly survey from 2010Q2 to 2015Q4. Cox and zero-truncated negative binomial models and difference-in-differences approach were applied to analyze tourism demand and the project’s impact on inbound tourists’ length of stay and expenditure in Japan. Empirical results showed a positive and significant average treatment effect on length of stay and expenditure for tourists from Australia, China, Russia, and Thailand. These findings indicate that the Japanese government should use differentiated strategies considering different nationalities’ characteristics to attract foreign tourists.

KEYWORDS:

• Japan
• tourism demand
• tourism nation promotion
• Asia Pacific
• tourism marketing
• Cox proportional hazard model
• zero-truncated negative binomial model

Acknowledegement

We are grateful to the Japan Tourism Agency for providing us with the data used in this study. We also thank an anonymous referee, Prof. Chi-Hai Yang, and seminar participants at the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences of Academia Sinica (Taiwan) for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Pei-Yu Chi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1492-6512

Tsaiyu Chang http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1515-1293

Daisuke Takahashi http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7105-4047

Kuo-I Chang http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5068-2183

Notes

1 For details about the TNP project and primary sector goals, refer to the following homepage: http://www.mlit.go.jp/kankocho/en/kankorikkoku/index.html

2 The calculations and concepts refer to chapter 4 of the International Recommendations for Tourism Statistics 2008.