Is the Growth of Tourism-specialised Economies Sustainable? A Case Study of Sanya and Zhangjiajie in China

Abstract

Despite the relatively high economic growth in tourism-specialised destinations, the long-term sustainability of such growth has rarely been studied. This paper investigates sustainable growth using Sanya and Zhangjiajie as two special cases and applies an accounting growth model to measure the contributions of different input factors and of the total factor productivity to economic growth. The economic growth of Sanya and Zhangjiajie is found to be capital-driven, with small contributions from the labour force and a negative contribution from the total factor productivity, which implies that extensive tourism specialisation cannot promote long-term economic growth.

尽管旅游专业化目的地具有相对较高的增长率，但这种增长的长期可持续性问题却鲜有研究。本文以三亚和张家界作为案例，应用经济增长核算模型测量了不同投入要素以及全要素生产率对经济增长的贡献，用以调查旅游专业化引致的增长的可持续性问题。研究结果表明，三亚和张家界的经济增长是资本驱动的，劳动投入的贡献很小，而全要素生产率的贡献为负。根据新经济增长理论，三亚和张家界这种粗放式的旅游专业化是不能够促进长期经济增长的。

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism specialisation
• sustainable economic growth
• total factor productivity

关键词:

• 旅游专业化
• 可持续经
• 济增长
• 全要素生产率

Acknowledgement

This research was partly supported by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Research Grant (under account number: A-PL33 and A-PK59) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71322202 and 71203042).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hengyun Li

Hengyun Li is a Research Associate in the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China (E-mail: [email protected]).

Carey Goh

Carey Goh is an Assistant Professor in the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China (E-mail: [email protected]).

Zili Zhang

Zili Zhang is a Lecturer in the School of Management at Harbin Institute of Technology, Heilongjiang, China (E-mail: [email protected]).