The role of the digital economy in tourism: mechanism, causality and geospatial spillover

The booming development of the digital economy is not only greatly affecting the establishment of a modernized industrial system but also contributing to tourism innovation and a new pattern of smart tourism. This study proposes a measurement system for the digital economy from the perspective of digital infrastructure, integrated industrial development and the environment on the basis of Chinese city-level data from 2011 to 2018. First, the empirical discussion indicates that the digital economy can accelerate the recovery of the tourism and travel market at a faster pace. Additionally, it can have an indirect effect on tourism development by influencing the employment structure, economic growth, the innovation level and educational progress. Furthermore, spatial econometric analysis reveals that tourism development exhibits spatial autocorrelation and spatial agglomeration. The influence of the digital economy shows a strong negative spatial spillover effect, which diminishes as the geographical threshold value increases. In addition, a difference-in-differences (DID) model and a spatial difference-in-differences (SDID) model derived from the “Broadband China” policy are used to establish causality between the digital economy and tourism.