Spatial Distribution of Tourist Flows to China's Cities

This paper investigates the spatial distribution of inbound and domestic tourist flows to cities in China and their growth rates using exploratory spatial data analysis. This method is a set of GIS spatial statistical techniques that are useful in describing and visualizing the spatial distribution,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Tourism geographies 2013-05, Vol.15 (2), p.338-363
Main Authors: Yang, Yang, Wong, Kevin K. F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
China
Cities
Correlation analysis
Data analysis
Economic development
exploratory spatial data analysis
Geographic Information Systems
Geographical information systems
GIS
Growth rate
Growth rates
hot spots
Moran's I statistics
Peoples Republic of China
Resource Allocation
Spatial Analysis
spatial autocorrelation
Spatial distribution
Tourism
Tourist flows
Urban Areas
Urban geography
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Summary:This paper investigates the spatial distribution of inbound and domestic tourist flows to cities in China and their growth rates using exploratory spatial data analysis. This method is a set of GIS spatial statistical techniques that are useful in describing and visualizing the spatial distribution, detecting patterns of hot-spots, and suggesting spatial regimes. The global Moran's I statistics for inbound and domestic tourist flows reveal strong positive and significant spatial autocorrelation. Furthermore, the Moran significance maps indicate four significant inbound tourism hot-spot areas in 1999 and 2006 (the Beijing-Tianjin cluster, the Yangtze River Delta cluster, the Fujian coast cluster and the Pearl River Delta cluster), and five significant domestic tourism hot-spot areas in 2002 and 2006 (with the addition of the Chengdu cluster). Based on the results, we show that tourism flows are polarized into clusters and remain very stable over time. As has been seen in other countries, hot-spots tend to be in insular and coastal areas, and associated with cities that are higher in China's urban hierarchy. Implications are drawn, such as priority of resource allocations for hot-spot area and the utilization of spillover effects from hot-spots.
ISSN:1461-6688
1470-1340
DOI:10.1080/14616688.2012.675511