Does world heritage site initiation promote tourism? A difference-in-difference approach

Yueqi Wang, Shouming Chen and Ahmed Rabeeu

Tourism Economics, 2024, vol. 30, issue 8, 2111-2133

Abstract: Extant studies have found that the inscription of World Heritage sites (WHS) has no or negative effect on tourism in China, which does not explain why Chinese local governments are eager to apply for WHS. This study employs the difference-in-difference approach and city-level data from China to assess the effect of WHS over a more extended period, starting from initiation instead of inscription. The results indicate that WHS initiation can promote tourism, while WHS inscription reduces tourism revenue. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis reveals that WHS initiation has a more positive effect on domestic tourism revenue in the eastern region of China. In contrast, WHS inscription has a more negative effect on tourism revenue in the western region.

Keywords: China; difference-in-difference; world heritage; world heritage initiation; world heritage inscription (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13548166241253306 (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:sae:toueco:v:30:y:2024:i:8:p:2111-2133

DOI: 10.1177/13548166241253306

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Tourism Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().