Officials’ Characteristics And Regional Tourism Economy: Empirical Evidence From Southwest China

With the rapid development of tourism market,the contribution of tourism to regional social and economic benefits is constantly increasing,and tourism has become a strategic pillar industry for the priority development of all regions.However,when local municipal governments develop local tourism,due to the different attitudes and preferences of the government leaders towards the development of tourism economy,they may adopt heterogeneous tourism economic behaviors such as tourism planning,tourism policies and tourism infrastructure construction.Under China’s“government-oriented”tourism development strategy,will the characteristics of officials have an impact on regional tourism economy?This is a subject worthy of attention.This paper,under the systematic review of Institutional Theory,Entrepreneurial Government Theory and Upper Echelons Theory,constructs the logic framework of institutional environment--government role--officials’characteristics,and thus establishes the theoretical possibility of the relationship between officials’ characteristics and regional tourism economy.In addition,according to the importance of the municipal party committee secretary in the regional economic development and tourism power structure,this paper uses the data of 46 prefecture-level cities(prefectures)in Sichuan,Guizhou and Yunnan provinces in southwest China from 2005 to 2014,to estimate the correlation between municipal party committee secretaries’characteristics and regional tourism revenue by using the panel two-way fixed effect model.On this basis,the lag effect of officials’ characteristics on tourism revenue is also investigated.The research conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)In general,the correlation between officials’ characteristics and regional tourism economy exists in the three southwest provinces,and the relationship between different officials’ characteristics and tourism revenue is heterogeneous.(2)Among the educational background characteristics of party secretary,economic and management major is conducive to the development of regional tourism economy.(3)Among the work experience characteristics,the higher the correlation between the work experience of municipal party secretaries and the development of tourism economy,the more helpful it is to improve the regional tourism revenue.(4)In the demographic characteristics,there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the age of party secretaries and regional tourism revenue.(5)The lag effect of the economic and management major,correlation between work experience and tourism economy development and age of the last year’s party secretary is consistent with that of the current party secretary.The innovations of this paper are as follows:(1)The research focus is shifted to the officials’ characteristics at the micro level.Through empirical research on the relationship between the personal characteristics of party secretaries and regional tourism revenue,the relationship between officials’ characteristics and tourism economy is further verified,providing new research ideas for researchers in related fields.(2)By systematically introducing the Entrepreneurial Government Theory and Upper Echelons Theory as the theoretical basis for studying the characteristics of officials,broadening the applicability of theories of other disciplines in tourism research field.(3)Delphi method was innovatively introduced to quantitatively evaluate the correlation between the work experience of municipal party secretary and the development of tourism economy through two rounds of expert evaluation,making the estimation of its coefficient more accurate.