Invisible Cities



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1.3 Aim


This dissertation aims to look deep into the issue of air quality, to examine its significance of the inbound tourism of China. Poor air quality, in other terms, air pollution, seems to be a potential threat of the speculation of tourism demand, because pollution will stain the destination attractiveness and eventually decrease in tourist demand. However, China as a newly raised market, although many works has been done on its tourism, there is nearly no research focusing on air pollution, to confirm or dismiss its impact. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate what this effect can be, and also contributes to fill in the research blank that takes the factor of air quality into account.

1.4 Methodology


The method of this study is divided into two fragments, theoretical reviews and a quantitative analysis. In the part of theoretical review, relevant theory will be presented first, following by a series of cases that the destinations had coped with the impact of similar factors, in order to give an indication for this topic, in other words, the expectation of the influence of air pollution in China. After reviewing the literatures and cases, some hypothesis will be formulated, which will be tested by the quantitative model, which constitutes the other fragment of the method of this research.
The modeling of tourism demand depends on the secondary data (Song & Li, 2008), as a consequence, desk research will be adopted, in order to select appropriate independent variables for this study. As mentioned, the tourist demand will be identified as tourist arrivals. The air quality will be illustrated by the variable representing yearly emission of Sulfur Dioxide (ton/year), which is expected to show a change on the demand of tourism.
Furthermore, the tourist demand can also be influenced by the year lag. Therefore, a long-term impact will also be investigated.


1.5 Structure


The rest of the dissertation will be organized as follows. Chapter 2 will look into a series of scientific literatures to discuss tourism in general and characteristics of tourism in China, which also provide answers to the first and second sub question. Chapter 3 will dig deeper of the factors influencing inbound tourism to destinations, in order to formulate a hypothesis based on the expectations of how other negative incidences drive the tourism demand in the case studies. Chapter 4 is going to introduce the quantitative method, empirical model, and selection of the independent variables. Chapter 5 will contain the test of the hypothesis, and present the primary results of the regression. Chapter 6 will further discuss the hypothesis and provide the answer to the fourth sub question. Chapter 7 will summarize the findings from both theoretical and empirical studies, and finally reveal the answer to the main research question; in other words, draw the main conclusion of this dissertation.


Chapter 2 Theoretical Review


Tourism has been taken into account by the policy makers of China as a channel of promoting modern image in the global stage, and a way of increasing foreign exchange receipts and enhancing the mutual understanding since 1978, the 3rd Plenary Session of 11th Central Committee, the moment that China opens its gate to the world again (Uysal, Wei, & Reid, 1986). For over 30 years, there have been substantial policies supporting tourism industry implemented to boost its foreign tourism, for example, enhancing the conversation and environmental protection, investing in its infrastructure and tourism facilities, intensifying tourism education, training on human resources, and regulating based on the market (Zhang, Chong, & Ap, 1999; Xiao, 2006). The other policies are running effectively due to the strong performance of Chinese economy in the recent decades, however, the first and the most primary policy, the environmental protection, seems to be shadowed its light in the public attention because of the issues of pollution. Therefore, it is meaningful to investigate both tourism industry and the issue of air pollution in China.
This chapter will be arranged as follows: Section 2.1 is going to introduce the definition of tourism in general; Section 2.2 will look into the details of tourism in China, to present the overview of tourism industry based on the timeline; Section 2.3 will draw a conclusion of international tourism in China, thus answer the sub-question 1.2. Section 2.4 begins with presenting relevant knowledge of air quality, will discuss the status quo of air pollution issue in China; Section 2.5 will analyze the sources of air pollution based on a backward tracking of composition of pollutant, and the discuss the methods of mitigation, thus the second sub-question and its sub-question 2.1 will be answered; and Section 2.6 will summarize briefly from the analysis of air pollution, so the answer to the sub-question 2.2 will come out. Finally, in order to link international tourism to the air pollution issue in China, Section 2.7 will compare the differences of geographical distribution of these two topics, and make connection to the next chapter.

2.1 Introduction to Tourism


There can be hard to find out a uniform version about the definition of the term “tourism”, some scientists even claimed that there is no commonly accepted one (Ritchie, Carr, & Cooper, 2003). One of the reasons resulting in this chaotic circumstance could be complexity of tourism activity, which leads to a lot of diversified elaborations, because they concerning different aspects regarding different interests (van Harssel, 1994).
Therefore, although there have been myriad discussions dedicated to conceptualize the jargon “tourism”, many various valid explanations still exists. Nevertheless, it is imperative to seek for a dominant concept to draw a border of this research.
In the academic field, three approaches were identified to define tourism – “economic”, “technical” and “holistic” (Leiper, 1979), covered most of the typologies of the definitions. Thus, a framework of tourism definitions can be established based on these approaches.
The holistic approach attempted to cover all the aspects of this subject. Jafari (1977) suggested it is necessary to cooperate tourism into many affiliated subjects, such as sociology, psychology, anthropology and so on. The recent definition from UNWTO inherited this idea, and defined tourism as “a social, cultural and economic phenomenon, which entails the movement of people to countries or places outside their usual environment for personal or business/professional purposes”. This explanation also manifested that a unique definition of tourism is hard to obtain due to its complexity, which encompasses the efforts from different fields.
The early articles about tourism usually only noticed its economic meaning, so majority of them focused on the supply side, believed that tourism is a type of business that provides to the customers, traveling for any reasons, transportation, accommodation, catering facilities and related services (Australian Department of Tourism an Recreation, 1975). Later on, some other scientists argued that the provision of qualified services, “gracious hospitality”, in other words, is also critical for this industry. Thus by adding that into the concept, tourism had been developed to be more completed, became a kind of science and arts of satisfying visitors’ needs and wants (McIntosh, Goeldner, & Rotchie, 1995). Thus the cooperation and coordination across these related industries are needed.

The technical approach is used for develop an appropriate measurement for research purposes (Leiper, 1979); it also attempted to draw a precise boundary for “tourists”, in order to get suitable data for the analysis. Thus the technical definition is standing on the tourists’ point of view – the demand side of tourism. This flipside also contains huge numbers of definitions, but currently there is a prevalent and widely accepted one, amended by World Tourism Organization (WTO) in 1993, is rather succinct:


“The temporary visitors staying in a place outside their usual place of residence, for a continuous period of at least 24 hours but less than one year, for leisure, business or other purposes” (World Tourism Organization, 1993)
Leaving the residential places indicates that tourism must contain a spatial movement of people, and temporary staying indicates it is not a one-direction flow. So in the spatial point of view, tourism consists three components: origin, route and destination (Zhang L. , 2008).
The motivations or purposes of travelling are also noticed, most of the time it is related to spending holidays. Business is another significant part composing the travelling behavior, but there are also some other reasons, such as education, visiting friends/relatives, and in transit (Toh, Khan, & Lim, 2004). One or more of them triggers the demand of tourism.
However, the above definition has not mention the term “tourists”, instead it uses temporal visitors to refer to the individuals participating the tourism activities. To clarify, Leiper (1979) distinguished the term “tourists” from “visitors” in his paper, pointing out that tourists is a fraction of the visitors, which also includes excursionists. Both of these two types of visitors are temporarily living in the countries or regions other than their residential places for either leisure or business reasons. The main difference between these two visitor groups is the time length of stay. The visitors who have spent longer than 24 hours and less than one year, are classified into tourists, while the others, who perches less than 24 hours are excursionists.
To clarify, in this research, the term of tourism indicates the tourists spending between 24 hours and 1 year in the places differing from their usual places of residence, for leisure, business or other purposes. In essence, it is temporal demand of consumption, which is also the most important feature comparing with other economic activities.



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