A study of the effects and mechanisms of the digital economy on high-quality tourism development: evidence from the Yangtze River Delta in China

ABSTRACT

This paper discussed the spatial effects and influence mechanisms of the digital economy on high-quality tourism development in the Yangtze River Delta. It is found that the digital economy promoted high-quality tourism development with a spatial diffusion effect. The digital economy of cities in metropolitan and adjacent area contributed to high-quality tourism development. In non-metropolitan and non-adjacent areas, the lack of core city leadership and support of metropolitan policy are important factors that hinder the functioning of digital economy. Mediation effect model shows that the digital economy could drive high-quality tourism development by improving government efficiency and expanding market potential.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital economy
• high-quality tourism development
• the Yangtze River Delta
• Spatial Durbin Model
• spatial effects
• influence mechanisms
• nonlinear effect

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The data comes from the White Paper on China's Digital Economy Development in 2021 published by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.

2 The data comes from the Yangtze River Delta Digital Economy Development Report in 2021 published by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.

3 The detailed calculation process of the entropy weight method is not shown in the text to save the length of the article.

4 The keywords are Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Cloud Computing, Big Data, Internet, Internet of Things, Digital Technology-Derived and Information Technology-Derived vocabulary.

5 The data comes from the Yangtze River Delta Cities Digital Economy Index White Paper (2020) released by the Digital Economy Research Institute of H3C Group.

6 The city ranking refers to the 2020 City Business Attractiveness Ranking released by the First Financial - New Tier One City Institute. Second-tier cities and above include Shanghai, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Suzhou, Nanjing, Wuxi, Hefei, Wenzhou, Jinhua, Changzhou, Jiaxing, Nantong, Xuzhou, Taizhou and Shaoxing, while the rest of the cities are third or fourth-tier cities.

7 According to the division criteria of Shanghai Urban Master Plan (2017-2035), Nanjing Metropolitan Area Development Plan and Hangzhou Metropolitan Area Development Plan (2020-2035), Shanghai Metropolitan Area includes Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Nantong, Jiaxing, Ningbo, Zhoushan and Huzhou. Nanjing Metropolitan Area includes Nanjing, Zhenjiang, Yangzhou, Huaian, Chuzhou, Maanshan, Wuhu and Xuancheng. Hangzhou Metropolitan Area includes Hangzhou, Huzhou, Jiaxing, Shaoxing, Quzhou and Huangshan.

8 The border cities between Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui and provinces outside the Yangtze River Delta are not adjacent cities.

9 Data on the number of government-initiated public information are obtained from the annual reports on government information disclosure in the government official websites in each city, and data on the remaining variables are obtained from the official statistical yearbooks of each city.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Anhui Province Philosophy and Social Science Planning Projects“Research on the effect and mechanism of digital economy driving high-quality development of cultural tourism industry in Anhui Province” [AHSKQ2021D161].