Modelling the Impact of Tourism on Mental Health of Chinese Residents: An Empirical Study

Abstract

In the highly competitive social environment, people are facing psychological problems of anxiety, tension, and depression. This paper mainly examines the impact of tourism on negative emotions. This article uses the 2016 cross-sectional data of the Chinese Family Panel Studies (CFPS) to observe the relationship between household tourism expenditures and the emotions of family members. We used the Probit model and instrumental variables and selected two types of negative emotions as indicators to measure the mental health to establish a model together with economic indicators such as family tourism expenditure and other economic activity expenditures. The empirical results show that families spending on tourism have low probability of negative emotions or mental problems P<0.01. There are positive effects between family tourism activities and members' mental health. It can be seen that tourism is an effective way to alleviate national mental health problems.