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.

Tourism-led growth hypothesis in the top ten tourist destinations: New evidence using the quantile-on-quantile approach

“…This result may be explained by the extremely limited weight of tourism on the Chinese economy and is consistent with the empirical evidence previously reported for China by, among others, Chiang (2012), , He and Zheng (2011)and Li et al (2015).In this regard, according to data of the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) Economic Impact Report, the direct contribution of tourism to the Chinese economy in 2014 was 2.6% of the total Chinese GDP.In fact, a relatively pronounced relation, with a negative sign, was onlyobserved in the area that combines the lowest Thelink between tourism developmentand economic growth is equallyweak for Germany.…”

Tourism during health disasters: Exploring the role of health system quality, transport infrastructure, and environmental expenditures in the revival of the global tourism industry

“…Moreover, Zhang et al [ 53 ] and Becken et al [ 54 ] also described the importance of air quality on tourism. According to Li [ 105 ], there is growing awareness and concern regarding the state of the environment in China, specifically the inadequate air quality observed in its major cities. This issue has had a detrimental impact on China’s appeal as a destination for travelers and its efforts to position itself as a sustainable tourist destination.…”

An evolutionary process model of tourism resource curse: Based on path dependence theory

“…"资源诅咒" 是发展经济学中的一个经典命题， 泛指自然资源对经济增长的不利影响 [1,2] 。旅游发 展大多依赖于自然与文化旅游资源， 本质上也是一 种资源依赖型产业 [3][4][5][6][7] 。因此， 学者们对旅游业是否 存在资源诅咒现象进行了积极探索 [6,[8][9][10] 。一部分学 者认为旅游增长实际上相当于扩大了经济体的出 口范围， 因此提出旅游驱动经济增长假说， 各国也 基于该假说大力推动旅游业发展 [11][12][13] 。然而， 另一 部分学者通过计量方法发现旅游与经济长期增长 之间并不存在协整关系， 拒绝了旅游驱动经济增长 假说 [9,10] 。并且越来越多证据表明， 旅游经济增长对 其他产业有挤出作用， 并因此提出了旅游资源诅咒 假说 [4, [14][15][16] 。学者们进一步尝试通过面板数据、 多元 自回归模型(VAR)、 空间分析、 内生性门槛值回归 分析等日渐复杂的经济学研究方法来讨论旅游资 源诅咒现象是否存在 [9,14,17,18] ， 而国内研究则开始尝 试通过定性研究方法探究旅游资源诅咒的产生原 因 及 过 程 机 制 [3,5,19] [20] ， 但研究主要 基于经济学视角， 探讨资源依赖型旅游发展是否对 经济长期增长产生阻碍作用。研究视角的不同引 起了学术界关于旅游资源诅咒是否存在的激烈争 论 [21][22][23][24][25] 。一种早期的主流观点认为不存在旅游资源 诅咒。该观点基于出口驱动增长假说(Export-led Growth Hypothesis) [11,12] ， 并认为旅游通过将非贸易 商品转化为贸易商品， 扩大了经济体的出口， 因此 提出了旅游 驱动增长假说 (Tourism-led Growth Hypothesis) [21-24， 26] 。另一种观点则认为旅游资源诅咒确 实存在。部分学者发现旅游发展与经济长期增长 之间存在负相关关系， 旅游发展无法推动经济长期 增长 [10,16,18,27,28] [19,36] ， 容易造成区域产业单一 化 [16,37] ， 区域产品价格和贸易条件容易产生波动 [3,5,37] ， 这也会对区域经济结构及整体经济稳定性产生影 响…”