https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0326-504X
![Sample our Built Environment journals, sign in here to start your access, Latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5926/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Built-Environment.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
World Heritage Site (WHS) inscription has been considered as a certification of tourism quality since it is designated to properties with outstanding universal value. While it is hypothesised that the title can raise tourism attractiveness through signalling tourism quality, empirical evidence remains highly mixed. This paper tries to identify the causal effect by using unique daily city-pair tourist flow intensities from Tencent migration big data on two Chinese national holidays between 2015 and 2019 and constructing multi-dimensional fixed effects panel data models. We find that the WHS inscription does raise city tourism attractiveness. One WHS increases tourist inflow intensity by at least 6.7% up to around 10%. The tourism-enhancing effect is consistent under many robustness checks and displays some notable heterogeneity effects in terms of holiday types, days within each holiday and high-speed rail connections. These results suggest that WHS inscription could be a valid tourism quality signal used by tourism administrations to enhance city tourism attractiveness.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the editor, Professor Chirs Cooper, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 For the full list of WHSs, please see the official website of UNESCO World Heritage Centre at https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/.
2 The literature has widely examined the tourism impact of different quality disclosure behaviours, including top tourist city designations (Gao & Su, Citation2021), tourist attraction ratings (Gao, Su, et al., Citation2022), as well as WHS inscription (De Simone et al., Citation2019; Gao & Su, Citation2019; Su & Lin, Citation2014; Yang et al., Citation2010).
3 See the following Chinese news report on the WHS-driven opportunity for local tourism: http://fj.people.com.cn/n2/2021/0728/c181466-34841612.html.
4 The eight WHS cities are Chongzuo (Zuojiang Huashan Rock Art Cultural Landscape, July 2016), Tongren (Fanjingshan, July 2018), Xiamen (Kulangsu, a Historic International Settlement, July 2017), Zunyi (Tusi Sites, July 2015), Xiangxi Tujia and Miao autonomous prefecture (Tusi Sites, July 2015), Enshi Tujia and Miao autonomous prefecture (Tusi Sites, July 2015), Yushu Tibatian autonomous prefecture (Qinghai Hoh Xil, July 2017) and Shennongjia forest area (Hubei Shennongjia, July 2016). Two cities, Hangzhou and Yancheng, had a new WHS in July 2019, which was the Liangzhu Ancient City Relics and Migratory Bird Sanctuaries along the Coast of Yellow Sea-Bohai Gulf of China (Phase I), respectively.
5 We also use a subsample which excludes all observations from cities having a WHS before our study period and from WHS cities not having a newly-inscribed WHS during our study period. This makes only those cities without a WHS compared with those having a newly-inscribed WHS. Moreover, to make cities without a change in WHS listing status more alike to those with the change, we confine our data within provinces having a newly-inscribed WHS and their neighbouring provinces. The regression results, while not reported, show that a WHS still increases tourist inflow intensity by 9.4% and 8.3%, respectively, in two subsamples.
6 While not reported, we also conduct robustness checks with non-logged tourist inflow intensity, alternative model specifications that control for city-specific daily trends rather than present city-specific trends, control for city-specific quadratic trends of both host cities and TTO cities and control for city-pair order fixed effects. The regression results are consistent with our main findings. These results are available upon request.