Empirical Analysis On The Relationship Between Tourism Development And Economic Growth In Sichuan

Since development of the West Regions, the economic development of Sichuan province is rapid. Many economic indicators including GDP, investment in the fixed assets, and local fiscal revenue, list on the top in the west area. And economic aggregate, gross industrial output value, the total volume of retail sales of consumption goods of Sichuan province takes about a quarter of the west area. In the meantime, tourism scale is growing steadily; income from tourism is increasing each year, and gross income of tourism in 2009 is more than 5.7 times of that in 2000. On the other hand, from economic growth point of view, two-thirds of gross output in the world could be explained by working time, while the others should be explained by leisure time. It is necessary to research into the contribution of tourism to Sichuan economic growth, and the effect of Sichuan economic growth on tourism development.On the point of leisure time, the thesis made an initial analysis for the relationship between Sichuan economic growth and tourism development by Granger test, and we therefore conclude that tourism development is one of causes of economic growth. And then, analysis about the relationship is done in detail by VAR model, impulse response function method, analysis of variance, the interrelation between tourism and the other industries is discussed by industrial association analysis.The empirical analysis of relationship between Sichuan economic growth and tourism development indicates that:there is unidirectional causality between them, and which means, based on the history data, tourism industry is a factor of Sichuan economic growth, While Sichuan economic growth is not the primary impetus behind accretion of tourism industry. In the real economy, the influence of tourism based on spare time on Sichuan economic growth mainly shows in 4 aspects:first, it is markedly strengthened of direct contribution for tourism development to national income year by year; second, it is instability of contribution for tourism development to foreign exchange earnings, and this contribution shows less than what the year before in recent years; and it should be enhanced of effect on transfer of surplus labor; besides, it still is much small for effect of tourism development on related industry of unnecessary consumption.According to the above empirical analysis, measures to promote the development of tourism industry are proposed:on the one hand, tourism demand should be stimulated furthermore:take some measures to appropriately increase disposable income and leisure time; strengthen the effect of human capital on tourism for more intense travel motive; on the other hand, it should be improved for something related supply in tourism market:Increase input in tourism, strengthen infrastructure for tour and improve rules and regulations of tourism; build tourism brand, and enhance brand marketing, expand international tourism market; promote innovation of tourism product, upgrade the quality of services in the tourism industry, and the ratio of non-basic tourism consumption to rationalize the tourism consumption structure.