The Impact Of High-speed Railway On Urban Tourism Economic Growth

The continuous innovation of transportation technology and the construction of high-speed railway led to the "second great railway era".At present,China’s high-speed railway mileage in operation has become the longest in the world,and the mileage will continue to increase in the future.Because of its outstanding efficiency in shortening travel time and enhancing traffic accessibility,high-speed railway has not only brought a new mode of traffic choice for tourists,but also brought a positive impact on the economic growth of regional tourism along the route.High-speed railway tourism has become one of the hot topics in China’s tourism research.Existing literatures have studied the influence of high-speed railway on traffic accessibility,tourism destination selection,other tourism transportation systems,tourism spatial structure and tourism economic development level.These literatures have enriched the research content of high-speed railway tourism,laid the foundation for further in-depth research and provided inspiration.However,there are still the following deficiencies in the above literature: first,the existing research objects were mostly a certain line,a certain city or a certain city group,and there is still a lack of research on using large sample data for analysis nationwide.Second,the research methods focused on social network analysis,grey relational degree model,gravity model,etc.Although these methods can compare the changes of regional tourism after the opening of high-speed railway,they are not enough to prove the importance of high-speed railway to regional tourism.Third,few scholars empirically analyzed the heterogeneity and spatial spillover effect of tourism economic growth under the condition of high-speed railway.Based on the deficiencies of existing studies,this paper,using data of 260 prefecture-level cities from 2002 to 2017,analyzed the following three aspects.First,the double-difference method was adopted to empirically test whether the opening of high-speed railway has a significant impact on the growth of regional tourism in the whole country,meanwhile,considering the endogenous problem,and instrumental variables wre introduced to further analyze the impact of the opening of high-speed railway.Second,the paper discussed the heterogeneous influence of high speed railway on regional tourism economic growth under different developed degree of road network,dependence degree of tourism economy and endowment of tourism resources.Thirdly,this paper tested whether there is spatial spillover effect of high-speed railway on regional tourism economic growth.The results showed that the effect of the opening of high-speed railway on the total urban tourism economy and domestic tourism economy were significantly positive.And there was heterogeneity in the impact of high-speed railway on urban tourism economy.The more dependent the tourism economy is,the stronger the promotion effect of high-speed railway on its tourism economy will be.For cities with unique tourism resources,the stronger the promotion effect of high-speed railway on their tourism economy will be.Lastly,the opening of high-speed railway can bring positive spillover effect to the surrounding cities.In other words,the opening of high-speed railway can not only promote the development of the city’s tourism economy and domestic tourism economy,but also promote the development of the surrounding region’s tourism economy.