Drivers of tourism growth: Evidence from China

The article has constructed the nonparametric decomposition framework to measure the growth drivers of tourism economy, and analyzed the drivers with the input and output data of the tourism industry in 30 provinces of China from 2005 to 2012. The results show that the contribution of total factor productivity (TFP) was gradually overtaking that of the factor inputs in this period and became the main driver of Chinese tourism output growth, with its corresponding contribution rate jumping from 48.56% in 2006 to 76.55% in 2012. Technological progress was the key to the escalation of such contribution, while technical efficiency, scale efficiency especially, had a relatively smaller, slipping contribution to the growth and the contribution of pure technical efficiency was negligible, sliding from 51.44% in 2006 to 23.45% in 2012. The drivers for tourism economy growth differed from region to region, with the middle and western regions growing faster than the eastern region. The rise in Central China was mainly driven by scale efficiency, while that in the western region was mostly fueled by pure technical efficiency that appears to manifest in two distinct phases: drive of factor input in 2005-2008 and TFP drive in 2008-2012. The tourism economy of China became increasingly intensive from 2006 to 2012, where the contribution of TFP surpassed that of factor inputs and the growth was ever more driven by TFP.