The Effect of Transportation Networks on Heritage Tourism and New Urbanization—Empirical Research Based on Rich Heritage Sites in a Chinese Province

Abstract

Accelerating the construction of transportation networks has become an important bridge to promote the urbanization of heritage tourism destinations. Based on the development dilemma of tourism towns in northwestern China, this study collected the panel data of 10 cities in Shaanxi Province from 2006 to 2019 and used a panel error correction model to investigate the long-term and short-term relationships between heritage tourism and new urbanization. In addition, this paper establishes a regression model of the transportation network’s regulatory effect, revealing the extent of the impact of the transportation network on heritage tourism and new urbanization. The results show that (1) in the short term, the influence of heritage tourism on new urbanization is not remarkable, but in the long term, heritage tourism plays a positive role in facilitating new urbanization; (2) the short-term contribution elasticity of new urbanization to heritage tourism is less than that in the long term; (3) the regulatory effect of the transportation network rectifies the deviation caused by overdeveloped urbanization to moderate development in heritage tourism destinations.