The influence of governance on tourism firm performance

Corporate governance is a critical mechanism for the success of any firm. In the tourism sector, however, the issue of governance has attracted little research attention. This study enriches the literature on tourism governance by investigating how board size, the proportion of large shareholders and gender diversity on boards affect the financial performance of tourism firms. The sample data were obtained from publicly traded tourism firms in Taiwan. Ordinary least square regressions and two-stage least square regressions were conducted to test the hypotheses. The results show that board size is negatively related to performance and that the presence of large shareholders has a significant influence on tourism firms' return on assets and Tobin's Q. The influence of gender diversity on firm performance, however, was inconsistent. These governance variables are also confirmed as endogenous variables in the tourism sector.