A Study of the Contribution of Information Technology on the Growth of Tourism Economy Using Cross-Sectional Data

Information technology (IT) has dramatically changed tourism industry, particularly in facilitating and improving information discovery and dissemination in tourism industry. Prior research has identified the key role that IT plays in the development of tourism industry. However, IT is examined solely, while other factors that drive the development of tourism industry are neglected in these studies. Guided by the new economic growth theory, this paper integrates fixed capital, labor, and IT and further examine how they together affect the development of tourism industry. Based on the cross-sectional tourism data of 2014 in 30 provinces in China, this article runs gray correlation analysis first and then applies a Cobb-Douglas production function model. The results indicate that fixed capital, labor, and IT are all correlated with the total tourism revenue at a certain degree, and that the development of tourism industry replies more on labor and IT than on fixed capital. Labor is the factor that makes the largest contribution to the development of tourism industry.