Spatial effects in regional tourism growth

• We examined two types of spatial effects in regional tourism growth.
• We identified spatial spill-over effects and cross-city competition effects.
• A geographically weighted framework is used to account for spatial heterogeneity.

This study examines two types of spatial effects in regional tourism growth: spatial spill-over and spatial heterogeneity. A spatial growth regression framework is used to model the growth in regional tourism and identify the economic and spatial factors that explain the variability in tourism growth across 342 prefectural-level cities in China from 2002 to 2010. The analysis identifies several important factors, including local economic growth, localization economies, tourism resource endowments, and hotel infrastructure, as well as spatial spill-over effects and cross-city competition effects associated with tourism resource endowments and hotel infrastructure. A geographically weighted spatial Durbin model is then used to account for spatial heterogeneity in tourism growth patterns, and localized patterns of tourism growth are identified.