The influence of hybrid accessibility on tourism economy in prefecture-level cities: Evidence from China's high-speed rail network

Abstract

While modern transportation infrastructure such as high-speed rail (HSR) is expected to facilitate great benefits to the tourism industry, the main mechanism of such impact is attributed to HSR can enhance accessibility by shortening travel time among cities. However, as it is people rather than HSR that have an impact on the tourism economy, the accessibility in the tourism context should include factors associated with demand. Moreover, given that the urban population, economic income, and HSR network in developing countries like China are still in a stage of rapid growth, it is necessary to assess the accessibility dynamically. As such, we created an indicator named HSR network hybrid accessibility based on the tourism scenario, which incorporates the spatial-temporal contraction effect of HSR and the tourism demand, to dynamically estimate the accessibility of the HSR network. The difference-in-differences method is applied to investigate the impact of the HSR network on the tourism economy of prefecture-level cities in China. We provide the evidence that on average, HSR network hybrid accessibility promotes domestic tourism revenue and the number of domestic tourists of prefecture-level cities respectively. Compared with previous research models, the proposed indicator of accessibility has better explanatory power than traditional measures. The findings highlight that a coordinated policy should be implemented to maximize the accessibility generated by the HSR network and ensure that tourism is facilitated in specific cities.