Examining the complex causal relationships between the digital economy and urban tourist destination competitiveness

Yan Zhang and Jiekuan Zhang ()
Additional contact information
Yan Zhang: Guilin Tourism University
Jiekuan Zhang: Guilin Tourism University

Economic Change and Restructuring, 2024, vol. 57, issue 4, No 16, 28 pages

Abstract: Abstract Tourism competitiveness has always been a crucial aspect of tourism research. With the emergence of the digital economy, it is important to understand how this new form of economic activity impacts tourism competitiveness. This paper utilizes the configurational theory of systems thinking to examine the complex causal impact of the digital economy on tourism competitiveness. The paper finds that none of the digital economy variables are necessary for tourism competitiveness. There are two basic paths for the digital economy to drive high tourist destination competitiveness: dual-driven model of digital infrastructure and finance occurring in less developed regions and digital regulation-led dual-driven model of digital innovation and finance occurring in developed regions. The reliability of the findings is confirmed by rigorous robustness tests. This research furnishes critical insights into the digital economy and tourism competitiveness theories and applications.

Keywords: Digital economy; Tourist destination competitiveness; Configurational theory; Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis; Necessary condition analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10644-024-09739-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:kap:ecopln:v:57:y:2024:i:4:d:10.1007_s10644-024-09739-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... nt/journal/10644/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10644-024-09739-1

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Change and Restructuring is currently edited by George Hondroyiannis

More articles in Economic Change and Restructuring from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().