Tourism sanctions as a means of China’s economic statecraft: an fsQCA analysis

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines cases to identify sufficient conditions that give rise to tourism sanctions as a means of economic statecraft. Tourism sanctions indicate a state’s restrictions on outbound tourism to achieve diplomatic goals. A fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was used to compare relevant cases. Results demonstrated that tourism sanctions are likely to tackle hard security issues when any of the following sets of conditions are present: 1) targets are highly dependent on the source market, but not overall dependent on tourism, or 2) targets are tourism-dependent democracies. Tourism sanctions are typically intended to have a limited impact on a target rather than to topple its economy. Findings shed light on the less discovered aspect of international tourism as most of the cases are comparatively recent and still under researched.