High-Speed Rail and City Tourism: Evidence from Tencent Migration Big Data on Two Chinese Golden Weeks

Abstract

This paper estimates the effect of high-speed rail (HSR) on city tourism. To identify the causal effect, we measure tourism outcomes with population flow data from Tencent migration big data and construct daily panel data of two national holidays from April 2015 to May 2019. Empirical results reveal that HSR connection increases the intercity tourist flows, which holds under a number of robustness checks. Such effect is greater in the Labor Day holiday than in the National Day holiday, and the impact on tourist outflow in the first half holiday is greater than that on tourist inflow. We also find that HSR connection increases the intensity that tourists travel by train. Our findings provide solid evidence on the contribution of transportation improvement to city tourism economy.