Sustainable Synergies between the Cultural and Tourism Industries: An Efficiency Evaluation Perspective

Zhen Su, Joshua R. Aaron, William C. McDowell and Dan Dan Lu
Additional contact information
Zhen Su: Department of Tourism Management, Business School, Guangxi University, No.100 East Daxue Road, Nanning 530004, Guangxi, China
Joshua R. Aaron: Department of Management, Jones College of Business, Middle Tennessee State University, MTSU Box75, Murfreesboro, TN 37132, USA
William C. McDowell: Foster College of Business, Bradley University, 135 Westlake Hall, 1501 West Bradley Avenue, Peoria, IL 61625, USA
Dan Dan Lu: Applied Economics Postdoctoral Research Station, Guangxi University, No.100 East Daxue Road, Nanning 530004, Guangxi, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 23, 1-20

Abstract: Cultural tourism has received widespread attention for its role in promoting cultural heritage and economic growth. However, there is insufficient research regarding how to verify the synergy between culture and tourism and how to ensure its sustainability in the integration of the cultural and tourism industries (CTI). This study establishes an interdisciplinary composite analytical framework from the perspective of efficiency evaluation. China, a country that has advocated the integration of CTI since 2009, is the research setting. The findings indicate that the technical efficiency of the tourism industry has increased significantly since the involvement of the cultural industry. Meanwhile, economically underdeveloped regions have opportunities to catch up with developed regions in terms of technical efficiency, and they perform better in terms of sustainable productivity growth. Importantly, U-shaped and inverted U-shaped curves were found in the coordinate systems composed of groups comprising the coupling coordination degree and the efficiency-related index, respectively. This finding reveals the existence of a running-in effect in the integration process of CTI, thereby contributing to both theory and policy-making.

Keywords: cultural and tourism industries; synergies; integration; sustainable; technical efficiency; Malmquist index; coupling coordination degree; running-in effect; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/23/6607/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/23/6607/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:23:p:6607-:d:289980

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().