What influence do regional government officials’ have on tourism related growth?: evidence from China

ABSTRACT

Using a rich dataset of mayors and municipal party committee secretaries from 289 prefecture-level cities for the period 1994–2018, this paper analyzes the influence of government officials’ educational background, political capital and individual characteristics on tourism economic growth by the panel model. Results suggest that mayors and municipal party committee secretaries with higher academic qualifications and social science backgrounds focus more on the development of inbound tourism. Longer tenure has a positive impact on the overall tourism income, domestic tourism income and inbound tourism income. In contrast, there is no direct positive relationship between officials’ involvement in politics in their hometowns and the regional tourism economy. The age and gender of officials have no effect on the development of regional tourism. These conclusions can help predict China’s regional tourism development based on the government official appointment and provide practical implications on the appointment process itself.

KEYWORDS:

• Government officials
• tourism economic growth
• individual characteristics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Southwest Minzu University Research Startup Funds [Grant No. RQD2021038].