AN ANALYSIS OF THE SPATIO-TEMPORAL DISPARITIES OF INBOUND TOURISM DEVELOPMENT IN CHINA: 1991-2010
WANG Kai1,2, YI Jing1, LI Hao1
1. Tourism College of Hunan Normal University, Changsha 410081, China;
2. Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China
Abstract Tourism is potentially considered as a vehicle for reducing inequalities in regional development through the spread of resources from the more developed regions of a country to its less developed areas. Based on the theories of unbalanced regional economic growth and the methods of econometrics, this paper explores the spatio-temporal trend structure of inbound tourism development level in 31 provinces of China from 1991 to 2010. Concretely speaking, the time-sequenced characteristics of inter-provincial differences were investigated with the standard deviation and Theil coefficient value of a composite index consisting of industrial scale index and quality index from absolute and relative perspectives; the evolution of spatial framework on inbound tourism in the past 20 years was expounded by using the deviation and ratio results. The results show that absolute and relative disparities in provincial-level of China's inbound tourism tends to reduce in the 1990's; Relative disparities has been gradually reduced while absolute difference has been somewhat enlarged from 2001 to 2010; Regional disparity of inbound tourism development level in our country presents a non-polarized and unbalanced development tendency as a whole, i.e. serious polarization lies between some western and coastal provinces; New secondary tourism economic growth centers such as the provinces in southwestern, northeastern and central China emerged in recent years; Gradient differences are still existing in the development level of inbound tourism in 3 economic zones of China. Finally, a paradigm framework for achieving a coordinated regional tourism development in China is also proposed.
2014, Vol. 29 
