The contribution of international tourism development to economic growth in Chinese economy

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the asymmetric effect of international tourism development on economic growth in eastern China based on yearly data for the period between 1995 and 2020. The quantile-on-quantile (QQ) approach introduced by Sim and Zhou was adopted in this work, because it assesses how various quantiles of inbound tourism affect different quantiles of economic growth. Thus, the QQ approach gives a more detailed explanation of general dependence of international tourism development and economic growth than traditional approaches, such as ordinary least squares or quantile regression. The empirical outcomes explain that the relationship between international tourism development and economic growth is mostly positive for eastern China. However, among China’s eastern regions, the correlation between economic growth and tourism development in Hebei and Zhejiang was the weakest.

KEYWORDS:

• International tourism
• economic growth
• quantile-on-quantile approach
• tourism-led growth hypothesis
• RGDP

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Here is the website for the data: http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/.