Externalities, market potential and tourism development: Empirical evidence from China
Externalities are important in explaining the development path of whole industries. The same is true for the development of tourism. This article analyses empirically which externalities have been most important in explaining the agglomeration of tourism in China. The findings of the regression analysis provide for food for thought for policy makers and researchers.
1 Introduction
According to the economic growth theory, higher efficiency can improve the state of development. Therefore, it follows that tourism efficiency can basically increase the quality of tourism development. However, in the final analysis, it also depends on whether the internal structure of the tourism is reasonable or not (Baoping Ren, 2010). From this perspective, the tourism sectors’ structure is one of the important variables that influences the development of tourism.
Relying on a macro perspective, one of the external features of the tourism structure’s1 dynamic changes is the tourism industry agglomeration2 phenomenon. It is also the same when specifying to the internal tourism industry. Externalities and increasing returns to scale can enhance the technology innovation capability of tourism enterprises through the skilled labour market, professional service of intermediate input and technology spill-overs. These effects have become important for achieving adjustment, optimization, transformation and upgrading of tourism’s structure. As a result of the tourism structure’s dynamic evolution, the tourism industry agglomeration phenomenon includes both historical causal factors and other factors. For the former, neoclassical location theory gives the answer. Regarding the latter, spatial economy and the new economic geography provide a more precise explanation and the latter is the focus of our concern. Ultimately, the dynamic adjustment of the tourism structure is just the result of the specialization within the tourism industry. In fact, the specialization of tourism industry segmentation in the process of structure adjustment is the internal sources of tourism industry agglomeration; the tourism industry agglomeration is the form of the spatial organization of the structural adjustment performance.
Referring to the agglomeration in the tourism industry agglomeration, the main reason is that industrial agglomeration not only represents the dynamics of the economic structure. More importantly, it highlights the space factors missing in the neoclassic growth theory, namely the tourism market potential. Moreover, it also subverts the assumptions about perfect competition and constant returns to scale, which were key elements in the neoclassical growth theory. The contribution of the new economic geography school is remarkable. It integrates the industrial spatial agglomeration, market potential and economic growth into a unified analytical framework for dynamic investigation. According to this theory, the tourism industry’s agglomeration accompanies tourism scale expansion. Tourism industry agglomeration promotes tourism scale expansion mainly by expanding market breadth and depth: for the former, the tourism industry’s agglomeration can expand internal product markets through the accumulative cycle effects of the self-reinforcing demand which is released by the market potential. A typical example is what Krugman called the “Home Market Effect”. For the latter, the tourism industry’s agglomeration cannot only reduce tourists’ search costs, but can also reduce tourism enterprises transaction costs. In short, tourism industry agglomeration can promote tourism development by expanding the market potential and releasing agglomeration economy.
2 Theoretical exploration
As mentioned above, tourism industry agglomeration mainly comes from the tourism structure’s dynamic adjustment under the market allocation, and it affects the tourism industry scale through the generalized form of agglomeration economy. In detail, the logical starting point lies in the differences between the level of sophistication and rationalization of interregional tourism structure. Dynamic mechanism performances as the externalities of overall tourism industry’s development dominated by the tourism structure, because relying on tourism resources endowment, tourism development model driven by traditional factors is no longer suitable for industry requirements of shifting to the modern service industry, the externalities of tourism industry agglomeration becomes an important potential power for the development of tourism industry. As mention above, the externalities of tourism industry agglomeration not only refers to labour market share and the home market effect, but also includes the industry correlation effect. In a narrow sense, tourism industry correlation effect usually refers to the backward correlation or linkage, which mainly manifests in demand-pull effect between tourism industry and related industries. While tourism productive service function is targeted at tourism industry forward correlation problem, forward correlation can reflect more importance that the tourism industry contributes to the development of the other national economy industries. The interpretation of the relationship between tourism industry agglomeration and the financial externalities and the theoretical notion of it is relatively clear.
Based on the existing theoretical research, the interaction relationship principle of tourism structure, agglomeration and development is provided with universality3. In terms of tourism, the static configuration and dynamic adjustment of tourism industry structure have the same important influence on it. Nevertheless, it is also noted that the existence of technical externalities is indisputable as the general industrial economic theory suggested. But for this issue, there have been for a long time two arguments: specialization and monopoly are more conducive to industrial development or diversification and competition are more conducive to industrial development. This refers to the so-called MAR externalities (Marshall, 1890; Arrow, 1962; Romer, 1986) and Jacobs externalities (Jacobs 1969) (Qi Liang and Xuefeng Qian, 2007). For the development of tourism, the externalities of different industrial sectors take effect in the same way. The MAR externalities theory states that, in a particular space, a large number of agglomerations or monopoly can promote technology and knowledge spill-over among the enterprises in the industry. This allows for the internalization of technology externalities, which is conducive to the development of an industry. The Jacobs externalities theory suggests that knowledge can spill-over among the enterprise belonging to different and complementary industries. Thus the higher the degree of diversification of local industries, the more conducive to externalities generated, and promoted the development of the industry. The phenomenon is important to explain urbanization. In comparison, MAR externalities theory emphasizes that monopoly is more conducive to innovation, while Jacobs externalities theory emphasizes competition is more conducive to innovation. In addition, different from these two externalities theories, Porter externalities identifies with Jacobs externalities viewpoints about competition conducive to spill-over of knowledge innovation, but that knowledge spill-over mainly occurs in the same industry. The three theoretical reflections on externalities can help addressing the question what kind of tourism industry market structure is more conducive to innovation. Exactly, which kind of externalities promoted the industry growth? The research conclusion is not given by the empirical evidence (Glaeser, etc., 1992; Feldman and Audretsch, 1999; Blien etc., 2006). Moreover, for the literatures of industry agglomeration mainly focusing on the externalities between industries, few literatures explore the externalities of subdivision in a particular industry. Therefore, based on the current status of Chinese tourism industry statistics, this paper goes deep into the interior of single tourism sector: it constructs the index of specialization and diversification of tourism subdivision. Furthermore, based on the perspective of market potential generated in the process of tourism industry agglomeration, the paper tries to reveal and empirically verify the influence mechanism between tourism industry agglomeration and development.
3 Model specification and variable definitions
3.1 Model specification
In order to analyse the relationship between tourism industry scale and static configuration and dynamic adjustment of tourism sector structure, we adopt a two-factor (capital and labour) Cobb-Douglas production function:
Where Y is total output of tourism industry, A is technical level, K is capital and L is labour input, i is region and t is time.
Lag type (1) for one period and take the logarithmic on both sides, we can derive the model of growth rate:
We assume that in region i, tourism sector subdivision’s growth of the technical level A in period t depends on the static and dynamic adjustment of tourism sector structure, namely it depends on the ratio of tourism sector structure static configuration and the various dynamic externalities of tourism industry agglomeration. Therefore, type (2) can be further converted to:
Where H is concentration ratio, S is specialization, D is diversification and C is competition.
Plug type (3) into type (2) and get:
3.2 Variable Definitions
Explained variable is tourism total output4, namely the revenue of five kind of tourism industry segment is adopted to measure the output.
Explanatory variables include the ratio of static configuration and externalities of dynamic agglomeration of tourism industry structure: five basic segments’ fixed assets and employment were selected to represent the inputs of capital and labour. Other explanatory variables are defined as follows:
3.3 Concentration of tourism
Considering the current situation of Chinese tourism industry statistics and the difference between the annual statistics indicators, the paper uses the ratio of two kinds of tourism subdivision output except star hotels, travel agencies and scenic spots (points) to the tourism industry total output to measure the concentration of the tourism industry in order to keep the consistency and comparability of the statistical data. The lower proportion indicates that the leading position of three kinds of tourism subdivisions in tourism development is more obvious and the concentration of tourism industry is higher. Basically two aspects are considered: first, in the annual China Tourism Statistics Yearbook, the existing statistical index about the star hotels, travel agencies and tourist scenic spots (points) is relatively intact, furthermore, the proportion of three tourism basic subdivision output is higher. Second, due to the borderless nature of tourism industry development, new formats originating from industry convergence emerge constantly. The existing official tourism statistics did not give a specific statistical classification standard, only generally merged it into the tourism subdivision of other tourism enterprises.
3.4 Specialization of tourism
The formula is:
Where n is whole country, Yn,j is national output of j industry (respectively represents star hotels, travel agencies and scenic spots (points)), Yi is tourism total output of i province, Yn is national tourism total output. Obviously, this index measures specialization degree of j industry relative to the national level in regioni.
3.5 Diversification of tourism
A feasible and intuitive method is adopting the ratio of other tourism enterprises belonging to five basic tourism industry subdivisions to measure the diversification of tourism. This method can reflect the diversified trend of tourism sector to a certain extent, but it also ignores the diversified competition of four kinds of most important tourism subdivisions namely star hotels, travel agencies, scenic spots (points) and tourism transport companies. In addition, for the other tourism companies, the China Tourism Statistics Yearbook did not give a clear definition of content and statistical standards varied. Furthermore, there was a serious lack of other tourism enterprises’ statistical indicators in some years. For example, China Tourism Statistics Yearbook (Copy 2000) missing all statistical indicators of the other tourism enterprises’; China Tourism Statistics Yearbook (Copy 2003) classified the rest enterprises as the other tourism enterprises excepted star hotels and travel agencies; China Tourism Statistics Yearbook (Copy 2005) classified the rest enterprises as the other tourism enterprises excepted star hotels, travel agencies and scenic spots (points). Therefore, if we only use the other enterprises as the proxy index of tourism diversification, the problem of divestiture will emerge.
Where M is the total number of tourism sectors Yi,j' is the sum of all other tourism sectors output excepted sector j in i province. Yn,j' is the sum of all the other tourism sectors output excepted sector j in whole country. The indicator reflects the diversified environment possessed by sector j in i.
3.6 Competition of tourism
The indicator is designed to measure the intensity of competition facing the tourism sector in a certain region, namely, Ci,j is the intensity of competition facing sector j in i province, which is defined as the quotient of two ratios: one ratio is generated from the enterprises number of sector j in i province divided by the output of these enterprises while the other ratio accounted these two numbers on the national level.
Where qi,j is the enterprises number of sector j in i province, qn,j is the enterprises number of sector j in whole country. Obviously, the ratio is larger indicates that in this region, the enterprises’ competition of the certain sector is more intensive.
In addition to these variables, we also introduce the variable of tourism market potential. This variable not only can be used to measure the degree of a regional tourism market closed to the external market, but also reflect the financial externalities generated in the process of tourism industry agglomeration. The empirical literatures of the new economic geography commonly adopted Harris (1954) market potential function. According to the calculation method, construction of tourism market potential function as follows:
Where MPi is the region’s tourism market potential; Yi is the national tourism total output in i region; dij is the distance between i and j ; Yi is the internal distance in region , its calculating formula is 
is the land area of region i.
Tourism market potential can also reflects the output of tourism industry on the level of province, namely the spatial agglomeration structure of tourism economy development. Specifically, a regional tourism market potential is greater, meaning that the tourism industry structure adjustment is more helpful to optimize the environment; the ability for output of tourism industry is stronger. Moreover, if the accessible tourism market scale of certain region is larger, the agglomeration economy caused by financial externalities and technical externalities of tourism industry development can effectively enhance the tourism industry productive efficiency.
Except using growth rate to represent tourism productive element, all other variables in this paper take the logarithmic. Plug type (8) into type (4) and get:
4 The analysis of the empirical results
The study sample in this paper is the panel data (excluding Tibet) of 30 provinces and autonomous region in China from 2000 to 2009. Respectively, the original data comes from China Tourism Yearbook and China Tourism Statistics Yearbook over the years.
4.1 The preliminary regression of national data
Table 1 reports the preliminary regression results of the tourism sector structure static configuration and dynamic adjustment, namely the concentration of tourism sector structure and agglomeration externalities to the scale of tourism industry at the national level. Table 1 shows that the coefficient of tourism sector capital input is positive. Nevertheless, the coefficient of the tourism sector labour input is positive, but basically not significant. Comparing above two regression coefficients, the former is bigger than the latter, which indicates that the expansion of Chinese tourism industry scale is basically driven by capital input. The input of capital has a significant role in promoting the tourism industry’s development. In addition, tourism regression coefficient on the initial condition is significantly negative at 1 % level, which shows there is a catch-up effect at the beginning of tourism development in backward areas compared with developed areas. The result indicates that these backward areas show relatively higher growth and the differences in the level of regional tourism development are gradually reduced.
In Table 1, model 2 to model 9, the relevant variables reflecting the tourism industry structure static and dynamic characteristics are plugged into the regression model. Because of a collinearity problem between the tourism competition and tourism market potential, these two variables will be regressed respectively in model 6 and model 7. Excluding model 2, model 3 and model 8, the regression coefficient of the tourism specialization is significantly negative and significant at the 1 % level, which shows that tourism specialization affected the tourism development in a negative way. In the province, the higher specialization level of tourism sector, or the tourism sector in the geographic location becomes more concentrated and its position in the geographical pattern becomes the more prominent, the further development of this tourism sector is slower, which means MAR externalities do not exist. In contrast, the regression coefficient of tourism diversification is significantly positive at the 1 % level, which shows the diversified development environment is conducive to the development of overall tourism industry. In the process of tourism industry agglomeration, the externalities originated from the symbiotic effect benefit the development of tourism industry. The result verifies the existence of Jacobs’s externalities. This is especially important in the reality of tourism development. From the perspective of demand, the demand of tourists are various and diverse. This requires the product function in the tourism market to be comprehensive. Specific to the realities, only the diverse and symbiosis environment created by the extension of tourism industry chain can achieve the equilibrium of tourism market at the most extent. From supply perspective, due to the low entry barriers of tourism market and less standardized of tourism Market economic order at this stage, it is highly possible to incur the phenomenon that a certain tourism sector specificities at a high level within the same geographical area. The endogenous mismatch risk of tourism industry structure caused by contradiction of supply and demand not only reduces the efficiency of tourism industry, but also against the development of tourism industry. The above two research conclusions are consistent with the research result about the relationship of specialization, diversification and tourism development (Yong Yang, 2011). In addition, in other industries, such as manufacturing industry of China, the existence of MAR externalities effect was not found while the existence of Jacobs externalities remains controversial (WenGuangBo, 2007; Sanmang Wu and Shantong Li, 2011).
In model 4 and model 5, the coefficient of tourism competition is significantly negative at 1 % level and the coefficient of tourism concentration is significantly positive at 1 % level is. The two regression results are obviously consistent. The former shows that the tourism industry internal competition and tourism development is a negative relationship, namely, higher degree of internal competition in certain tourism sector not conducive to the development of tourism industry, which proves that Porter externalities does not exist; The latter further reveals only by reducing the degree of tourism sectors monopoly or concentration, implementing the balanced development between tourism sectors, the development of all over tourism industry can be promoted. The model 5 shows that as long as the other two types of tourism sectors output accounted for 1 % increase, the speed rate of promoting tourism scale expansion will increase 0.1121 %. The possible reason for the former is existence of monopoly enterprises in the tourism industry. These monopoly enterprises dominate in resource acquisition, technology innovation, or product pricing, while other small and medium-sized tourism enterprises are in a weak position in the competition. Therefore, a temporary phenomenon is that if the monopoly price of monopoly enterprises in tourism industry is higher than marginal cost, a low utilization rate of resources will appear easily in the longterm market equilibrium. On the other hand, the small and medium-sized tourism enterprises gradually withdraw from the market due to a lack of competitiveness. For the current competition variables, it is difficult to distinguish between the competition effect and the scale effect. More attention should be paid to explain this variable. In order to describe the influence mechanism of this variable to the development of the tourism industry, we plugged tourism competition lagged on period into type (9) and regress. Model 6 reports the result. As showed in model 6, the coefficient of current tourism competition is still significantly negative, while this coefficient lagged one period is significantly positive at 5 % level. Another possible explanation is that with the deepening of the tourism industry competition degree, the competition effect stimulates tourism enterprises to reform technology, promote technological progress and realize the tourism development. In short, the current phenomenon is caused by a negative effect of the enterprise scale; the lag process is caused by the positive effect of enterprise competition.
The Basic Regression Results of the Externalities and Tourism Development Table 1
Table 1
The regression results of model 7 and model 8 respectively generated from model 4 and model 6 plugged in the variable of tourism market potential. It can be seen that the tourism competition coefficients of the current item and lag is still robust. Studies have pointed out that the regional market potential and space agglomeration of manufacturing existed positive correlation (Xiuyan Liu etc., 2007). The theoretical basis lays in the greater the market potential of a region, the region, the more net profit the representative enterprises will obtain, which prompts the enterprises with profit maximization orientation to cluster in this region. In this process, the potential demand of the market gradually expanded and eventually leads the degree of industry concentration to increase. According to general principle of the new economic geography, tourism market potential also improves tourism industry agglomeration. What we care about is whether the development of tourism industry will be promoted when this process happens. There are two sides on the analysis of the problem: for one side, tourism industry agglomeration economy can promote the tourism industry development through the core – edge structure; for the other side, tourism industry agglomeration economy can lead to unbalanced in regional economic development, which may postpone tourism development. Obviously, the empirical study results of model 7, model 8 and model 9 support the positive theoretical analysis and prognosis, namely the bigger the tourism market potential is, the more greater the tourism scale will expand, which demonstrates the existence of financial externalities and consistent with the theoretical expectations. Model 7, as an example, every 1 % increase in tourism market potential, can significantly improve the tourism scale expansion rate of 1.1469 %. The numerical changes are very significant. This number is also similar with the coefficient of tourism market potential reported by model 9.
4.2 The nonlinear regression results of national data
In addition, in order to explore the possible nonlinear relationship between tourism specialization, diversification and explained variable, this paper plugged square items of tourism specialization and diversification into equation (9) and executed variable inspection. In table 2, model 1 and model 2 report the first degree coefficient of tourism specialization is significant negative, square coefficient is significant positive, namely the relationship between tourism specialization and interpreted variable is nonlinear U-shaped which indicates the situation became worsen before it improve. There are threshold-effect between tourism specialization and the explained variables. From the perspective of the numbers, the critical value of U-shape curve, which indicates the relationship of tourism diversification and tourism industry development is 1.1296 while during sample period, the mean value of tourism specialization is 1.0921. It is obvious that most of the provinces are still in the left half of the U-shaped curve. In other words, tourism specialization level can promote the expansion of tourism industry scale only after crossing the threshold value. To test the pre-set conditions, we respectively plugged the product item of tourism specialization lag one period and tourism diversification into model 1 and model 2. The regression results of model 3 and model 4 show that the coefficient of product item is significant positive. The economic meaning of the results indicate that tourism diversification possess the adjusting effects on the process of tourism specialization lag one period influencing tourism industry scale. In the diversified environment of tourism industry development, tourism specialization will show its positive effect on tourism industry development only after desirable structural adjustment. It also proved that the claim about tourism specialization effected tourism industry development negatively is too arbitrary. Model 5 shows the first degree coefficient of tourism diversification is not significant while square coefficient is significant positive. The result of model 6 is just opposite. Both two regression-results indicate that tourism diversification and interpreted variables does not exist nonlinear relationships. The positive effects of tourism diversification and tourism industry development have continuity. Model 7 and model 8 respectively carries out the regression with the first-degree item and the square item of tourism specialization and diversification. The result proved the robustness of research conclusion.
The Nonlinear Regression Results of the Externalities and Tourism Development Table 2
Table 2
The Externalities Mechanism of Tourism Industry Agglomeration Table 3
Table 3
4.3 A discovery: mechanism of tourism industry agglomeration externalities
As proved above, financial externalities effect offered by tourism market potential in the process of tourism industry agglomerations remarkable. In order to improve the construction of tourism products’ integrated system, externalities and IRS originated from the labour division of tourism sectors improved spatial agglomeration of tourism economic activities. The above content focuses on the influence of technical externalities on tourism industry development, in particular, determining the existence of different technical externalities and its impact on tourism development, the secondary geographic role should not be ignored in the development of the tourism industry. Furthermore, the specific mechanism of the interaction between financial externalities and technical externalities generated by tourism economic activities and tourism development remains to be revealed. In order to facilitate research, there are two hypothesis needed to be empirically tested under the framework of new economic geography.
Hypothesis 1: when tourism market potential represented the profit space of tourism enterprises, two kinds of decision-making behaviour of tourism operators will appear: one is that the tourism industry specialization of blindness, the overcapacity of tourism industry have a negative impact to the development of tourism; Another is that the tourism industry coordinating specialization, which essentially has the characteristics of tourism diversification. Therefore, the symbol of product item coefficient about tourism market potential and tourism specialization is uncertain.
Hypothesis 2: tourism market potential to some extent can represent the demand of tourism market or the supply of tourism product, which provides the necessary environment for the development of tourism industry the diversification. During the interactive process in certain space, tourism sectors with higher market potential can enhance the Jacobs externalities and more likely form agglomeration economy by additional financial externalities which originated from the elements flow effect, industry correlation effect and capital creation effect. The product item coefficient of tourism market potential and tourism diversification is positive.
In table 3, model 1 and model 2 regression results shows: tourism specialization coefficient is significantly negative, the product item coefficient of tourism specialization and tourism market potential is significantly positive. Therefore, the uncertainty of hypothesis 1 is clearly. Tourism industry agglomeration originated from the process of financial externalities is actually conducive to MAR externalities effect of tourism and tourism industry development. In other words, the tourism market potential can induce the technology and knowledge spill overs between different scale enterprises of tourism industry subdivision. As tourism market potential expanding, regional agglomeration of tourism industry subdivision can improve tourism industry development in certain degree. Model 3 and model 4 is a supplementary analysis on hypothesis 1, which respectively focuses on the regression results of the product item containing tourism specialization lag one period and tourism market potential lag issue.
The result shows that the product item coefficient is significantly positive. Although tourism specialization coefficient remains significantly negative, the absolute value of product item coefficient is still bigger than that of tourism specialization coefficient. This finding primarily based on two aspects: on the one hand, the expansion of tourism market potential provides release space for productive capacity of tourism specialization development; On the other hand, the entities of tourism industry subdivision operates the tourism industry agglomeration in the Rational standard target-oriented after identified the time lag existing in the process of interaction between the increasing of tourism market potential and the development of tourism industry. Model 5 and model 6 are empirical tests of the hypothesis 2. The coefficients of tourism diversification and tourism market potential are significantly positive which supports the prejudge of hypothesis 2.
4.4 Further discussion
The further research on why there is tourism diversification rather than tourism specialization can promote the development of tourism in China. At this stage it is meaningful even we obtained the empirical evidence that Jacobs externalities could promote the development of tourism industry. On the one hand, from the producers’ point of view, the diversified environment of tourism industry development provides market choices for more non-traditional tourism enterprises, which can stimulate these enterprises to provide multi-level and multiform tourism product system. It is naturally to form two endogenous situations in this process: for one case, different types of complementary enterprises in the upstream or downstream tourism industry can obtain the financial externalities through elements flow effect and industry correlation effect. For the other case, due to the optimized adjustment of tourism industry structure, technology and knowledge are liable to produce spill-overs between the enterprises belonging different tourism sectors, which will reduce the cost of tourism enterprises innovation. From a consumers’ point of view, the differential preference of tourism consumption demand is liable to be satisfied in diversified tourism industry environment, which can effectively reduce the search and transaction costs in the tourism market. On the other hand, travel experience is at the core of the tourism industry existence. The complexity of tourism motivation dominants the differentiations of tourism demand. Compared with the single specialization supply of tourism products, tourists will be more inclined to complicated and diversified tourism products system if they can obtain the psychological and emotional cognition. In the literatures of new economic geography, producers and consumers agglomeration a positive cycle mechanism of cumulative causation (Krugman, 1991). This kind of agglomeration effect can contribute to the path lock of tourism industry in certain region and expand the tourism market potential further. The preference of the tourism producers who operated basing on the technology or market choice is diversified tourism industry development environment while the preference of the tourists who choose from the perspective of differentiation demand is diversified tourism industry development environment. The coupling relationship between the supply and demand completely originated from the tourism market regulation will further enhance the effectiveness of intensive effect of diversified tourism production system in the development of the tourism industry.
5 Conclusion and Policy Implications
This article’s main conclusions are the following: (1) On a national scale, the diversification of tourism has a significant positive influence on the tourism scale expansion rate. In other words, the diversification of the development environment for tourism industry is conducive to promoting tourism development, that is to say there is the externalities mentioned by Jacobs. At the same time, the MAR externalities and Porter externalities hypothesis are rejected. (2) Referring to the tourism competition degree and concentration coefficient of regression, it shows both the tourism industry monopoly, and subdivision tourism industry monopoly enterprises, have a significant negative impact on tourism development. (3) The expansion of the tourism market potential can significantly promote the development of the tourism industry, which mainly provides profitable outcome for tourism producers, which fits the framework of new economic geography theory. (4) There is a significant u-shaped nonlinear relationship between tourism professionalism and tourism development, when the tourism specialized level is low, it is not good for the tourism development; when the tourism professionalism cross threshold value, it will promote the development of tourism. The basic reason why this happens is that tourism specialized specification development not only has a certain time lag, but also need to have interaction with other factors such as the diversification of tourism, the tourism market potential and so on. (5) The potential of the tourism market is helpful to improve tourism specialization and diversification of the positive effect for the tourism development.
The research conclusion of this paper has a certain theoretical reference value when making the policy of the tourism industry. (1) The agglomeration and the tourism industry is the necessary carrier for adjusting and optimizing the tourism industry structure and promoting the development of the tourism industry, which is not only reflected that the tourism industry cluster can effectively raise the productivity of the tourism industry, can also directly promote the economic development of the tourism industry by releasing the agglomeration economy. Therefore, local governments shall formulate policies, which promote the development of tourism industry agglomeration and in this way, it can realize the tourism industrial structure optimization and upgrading through the tourist market spontaneous adjustment mechanism. (2) Encouraging the diversified tourism industry development environment, in order to create positive conditions for tourism industry integration, which not only can expand unconventional “other travel companies” content of the tourism industry from two aspects: depth and breadth, also can promote the development of traditional basic tourism industry. (3) Professional development needs to be based on the tourism industry situation, in order to avoid blind expansion, on the one hand, we need to consider how much degree that the development of regional tourism market potential and diversification of tourism to tourism industry specialization combined, considering the tourism market information, then strengthen the mutual exchanges and relate tourism industry sectors collaboration; on the other hand, at the same time we need to reduce the concentration of tourism, to further improve proportion extensibility consumer spending of tourism industry in the tourism department, to promote and regulate tourism industry or business segment to establish positive interaction between competition mechanism. (4) From the regional development, the tourism industry cluster have two positive meaning to regional economic growth from both inside and outside, mainly for two reasons: on one hand, tourism producer and consumer preference have a self-reinforcing agglomeration mechanism to diversification of tourism industry development environment, it promotes regional economic growth by the direct economic benefit of tourism industry development; On the other hand, the strength of tourism industry agglomeration, or agglomeration forwards to expand, can be turned into a regional development pole by the industry associations depth fusion indirectly effecting on regional economic growth, which a diversified growth pole will make the region economy development more vitality.
Notes:
1 In view of the similarity, we define the tourism sector structure and tourism industry structure as tourism structure in theoretical research in order to avoid confusion.
2 In general, tourism industry agglomeration comes from the dynamic change of tourism industry structure. Nevertheless, this paper focuses on tourism sector structure. In fact, tourism industry agglomeration in this paper is strictly called core tourism industry agglomeration. The connotation of tourism industry agglomeration is richer than core tourism industry agglomeration. Considering that tourism industry agglomeration is the conventional appellation in tourism research, so this paper still uses this term.
3 The reason of universality is that the interactive relationship among tourism structure, agglomeration and tourism development is mainly explanted on the level of industry. Accounting existing theoretical foundation is mainly related to the features of industry, few literatures discussed the relationship of subdivision structure and agglomeration in a single industry. According to the dialectical deduction principle, the paper attempts to provide theoretical evidence for interactive relationship among tourism industry structure, agglomeration and development by researching deeply in a single industrial boundary. In fact, the industry classification of tourism sector structure and tourism industry structure are similar, the mechanism of structure, agglomeration and development is basically identical, no matter in tourism sector or in tourism industry, and the difference only lies in the extension of tourism economy strength.
4 Explained variable in this paper is the degree of tourism development, which represented by economic scale of tourism industry; the latter is measured by tourism industry total output rather than tourism industry total revenue. There are four reasons to explain it: first, two indexes including fixed assets and employment of tourism industry are no longer recorded in tourism statistics after 2004, instead of this, these two indexes were replaced by fixed assets and employment of tourism sector. Second, the subdivision revenue of “non-tourism enterprises” accounts for a larger proportion in tourism total revenue; For example, the proportion reached 85.6 % in 2009. However, unfortunately, official tourism statistics did not carry on the detailed classification, in particular, the ambiguity of the tourism industry boundaries brought difficulties to this part of the statistics. The result is that the “non-tourism enterprises” of tourism sector unable to record in statistical number of tourism enterprises and couldn’t verify the existence of tourism Porter externalities. Third, if we view “non-tourism enterprises” of tourism industry as single sector, estimate the diversification and specialization index, the relationship between partial and whole contained by “non-tourism enterprises” will be fragmented.
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