Does world heritage list really induce more tourists? Evidence from Macau

Chia-Hui Huang, Jen-Ruey Tsaur and Chih-Hai Yang

Tourism Management, 2012, vol. 33, issue 6, 1450-1457

Abstract: It is commonly believed that being listed on the World Heritage List (WHL) results in attracting more tourists. However, this assumption has not been generally subject to rigorous econometric approach in the existing literature. To fill this gap, we assess the impact of the accreditation World Heritage status on the “Historic Centre of Macau” in 2005 on visitor numbers to the territory to identify the real effect of WHL on fostering tourism. In doing so, because of the policy restrictions on the mainland Chinese tourists, such tourists have been excluded from the analysis. The empirical results indicate that there is no significant effect of WHL on promoting tourism other than possibly a short-run tourism-enhancing impact. Notably, this effect is particularly relevant to Asian tourists. This paper discusses these results in the wider context of econometric analyses of tourism.

Keywords: World heritage list; Tourism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L83 Q26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (41)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:touman:v:33:y:2012:i:6:p:1450-1457

DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2012.01.014

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