Invisible Cities
Effects of media publicity
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6.2 Effects of media publicityLikewise, another important variable, media publicity, has also been proved to be significant by the models containing it, indicating that H2 is not rejected – More media publicity of air pollution has lead a decline of inbound tourism in Chinese cities from 2005 to 2012. They showed a strong support of this coefficient by being significant in 1% level, even in Model 5, while the interactive variable has not taken significance from it. Regarding to H2.1, the result of Model 6 shows that there is a significant impact of media publicity in the previous year, but this support is relatively weak (only significant when in 10% level). Indeed, Model 3,4 and 5 contains media publicity. The magnitude is also stable as sulfur dioxide, which fluctuate around -.0010. The actual number of tourist decline depends on the population size as well. Taking Beijing 2005 for example, the coefficient in Model 4 indicated that one thousand more webpages mentioning Beijing “air pollution” 2005 leads to 16759 less inbound tourists coming in the year of 2005. Regarding to the time-lagged estimation, the magnitude has turned smaller, which is -.000609. Again for instance, on thousand more webpages mentioning Beijing “air pollution” 2005 decreases inbound tourism of Beijing in 2006 by 9750 people. It suggests that media publicity in the previous year has less impact on tourists. However this result might be suspect, because it contradicts with sulfur dioxide in the previous year, which has larger impact than that in the current year. Media publicity is a access of knowing the situation of air pollution (sulfur dioxide), and since mentioned above, travelling to China usually need about one year to prepare, so the information in the previous year were supposed to be more important. This smaller magnitude of coefficient can be explained by that tourists might change their minds just before the departure when they heard air pollution in China is serious now, but since this dissertation does not study travelling behavior of preparation for tourists going to China, it leaves space for further researches for digging deeper from this point. Another reason leading to this result can be the limitations of variable MP itself which were discussed in Section 4.2.3, claiming that it is difficult to judge how those limitations will distort the results. However based on the result of Model 6, it might be able to resolve this doubt by stating that they have made the influence of MP underestimated. Finally the high correlation between the variables is also a reason that created this inconsistent change of magnitude, which is also calling for further researches of detecting and eliminating correlation. In summary, the main conclusion from all the quantitative analysis is that both sulfur dioxide emissions and media publicity have significant impact on international tourist arrivals of Chinese cities. This will lead the way to the final conclusion of answering the main research question in the next chapter. Chapter 7 Conclusion and recommendations7.1 ConclusionThis research is set out to answer the following question: How has air quality influenced international tourists for the Chinese cities? It aims to investigate the impact of poor air quality, which has been frequently exposed and progressively criticized by international media in recent years, on international tourism demand in Chinese cities, by using literature reviews and applying quantitative approach in the prefecture city level. International tourism has been growing throughout the years after in 1978. Accordingly, tourism as an important component of modern industry has also experienced a fast expansion over these 30 years. In fact, all the industries in China have been developed comprehensively thanks to the implementation of “Open Door” policy, which contributed to promote an attractive image of destination for tourists together with other tourist products, e.g. heritage reservoirs. Currently, China receives more than 200 million international tourists every year, which has created great economic benefits of foreign exchange receipts. However, the impressively fast industrialization has made Chinese cities become nearly “invisible” because of the heavy smog of air pollutants, and it also caught a lot of media attention. Since there are few scholars conducted about air pollution of urban tourism, similar cases which epidemic disease and street crime are investigated because of common characters share with air pollution as negative incidences. Based on the experiences learnt from the case studies, both air pollution and media publicity of air pollution are suspected to lead a decline of tourism demand, because favorable natural environment is always a crucial desire of tourists, and destination image can be easily tarnished by such a negative factor by media exposure. The first two hypotheses are dedicated to test the impact of air pollution. As stated in Chapter 5, they are not rejected because the coefficients are significant in reasonable levels. Likewise, the other two hypotheses of media publicity are also not rejected. Thus, this research has clearly evidenced their negative impacts on international tourism demand of Chinese cities, which is in line with the expectations based on the experiences gained from the other cases in the past. As a consequence, the answer to the main research question is easily provided. It can be concluded that poor air quality has negatively influenced demand of international tourists in Chinese cities. In other words, international tourism in Chinese cities has been jeopardized under the impact of air pollution. 7.2 RecommendationsWith regard to policy recommendations, the negative impacts manifested by statistical evidence are calling for the attention from policy makers of mitigation air pollution, which is contradictory to the goals of sustainable tourism development set up by the State Council. The attempts of decreasing emission of air pollutant by restricting transport volume and moving heavy pollutant-generating industry to another place before mega events were successful, but it lacks sustainable effectiveness and long-term implications. Some solutions had been identified in Section 2.5.2, that cool surfaces, urban trees and green roofs are effective for eliminating air pollution, which could be taken into account in urban planning in future. Furthermore, this research focuses on urban areas in China only, which may limit its application to the other areas e.g. rural areas. Importantly, however, this does not imply that generalization and application of this research is problematic. Cities are appropriate representatives because they serve the majority of international tourists, thus the conclusions obtained in urban tourism will give an indication of other niche tourism markets. Other countries could also use the conclusion for reference because it is widely acknowledged that negative factors, such as air pollution, will jeopardize tourism demand of a destination. Although the impact of air quality on international tourism has been concluded to be significant, there still leaves room for further researches, which could mitigate the high correlation between data from the previous and current year of sulfur dioxide and media publicity, and improve the confidence of the results, by applying more exquisite econometrical methods. 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