The unbalanced development and trends of China's regional tourism

Abstract

In this paper, taking the per capita tourism revenue of the administrative units of Chinese mainland from 2007 to 2018 as an indicator, we analyze the unbalanced regional tourism growth in Chinese mainland and its trends by using kernel density estimation (KDE), the Gini index, and exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA). The results demonstrate that (1) the distribution of regional tourism data in Chinese mainland and its four economic regions tends to converge, and the relative difference in tourism development among cities is slowly decreasing. (2) The differences in regional tourism development within the four economic regions in China are different, and each part shows its own degree of decline, with the gap in regional tourism development in Western China being the largest, and that in regional tourism growth in Northeast China the smallest. The difference in regional tourism development in both East and Northeast China decreased significantly and that in Central China decreased the least. (3) Finally, the difference in regional tourism development is dominated by a positive spatial correlation. The range of high-high types has expanded, and low-high and high-low types have decreased.

Keywords

• unbalanced tourism growth
• kernel density estimation
• esda
• china's regional tourism