The Temporal-spatial Difference and Convergence of Tourism Economy in ZheJiang Province

Abstract

Using coefficient of variation and Gini coefficient, this paper measures difference of tourism economy in Zhejiang Province through structural and regional decomposition, then uses convergence theory of economic growth to check the existence of convergence. The results show that total tourism economic difference tends to reduce gradually. The tourism economic difference features are as follow: It is mainly contributed by domestic tourism in structure, but difference of inbound tourism is higher than that of domestic tourism. While it is mainly contributed by the inter-regional difference, and the inter-regional difference is greater than difference within the region. Convergence test shows that tourism economy in Zhejiang Province is converging, that is, per capita output of regional tourism will converge to the same steady-state level in the long-term. Meanwhile, α-convergence and absolute β-convergence have been identified, but there is no club convergence, meaning that polarization phenomenon does not exist. KEYWORD: tourism economy; regional difference; convergence International Conference on Social Science, Education Management and Sports Education (SSEMSE 2015) © 2015. The authors Published by Atlantis Press 763 implications is that economic growth has a negative correlation between economic level and economic growth rate, which implies developing regions have a higher growth rate than developed regions. The absolute convergence refers to no matter what the initial conditions and economic structure is, all regions will converge to the same steady-state level. The conditional convergence refers to no matter what the initial conditions are, different regions will eventually converge to their own steady-state level because of existing the factors which affecting the steady-state level. Club convergence requires economies should have similar economic structures and similar initial conditions, when the two conditions are combined, each region will eventually converge to their own steady-state level(Shen,2012). 2.1.1 α-Convergence Test α-convergence uses logarithmic standard deviation of tourist income per person as indicator. The αconvergence phenomenon exists if regional logarithmic standard deviation of tourist income per person decreases. It is calculated as: