HSR’s time-varied influence on regional tourism development: Determining the time point for post-evaluating an HSR project’s hysteretic effect on the tourism economy

Abstract

Post-evaluating the effect of HSR on the tourism economy is necessary for regions (especially those relying on tourism industry development) to decide on their future HSR solutions or for other regions’ benchmarking for decision-making. However, the effect of HSR on the tourism economy is hysteretic (lagged and unstable), making identifying an appropriate time point crucial for accurately post-evaluating the effect. This current study addresses the seldom-touched issue of optimizing the post-evaluating time point of the effect of HSR projects on the tourism economy, offering a feasible solution based on the Vector Auto-Regression model. The current study uses this method on the empirical example of Henan Province in central China, identifying three years after HSR introduction as the appropriate time point. This study identifies the time-factor concerns of HSR’s externalities and contributes methodologically and practically to investigating HSR’s effects on regional tourism development.