Urbanization impacts on regional tourism development: a case study in China

Abstract

This paper studies the urbanization impacts on tourism development in four regions Guangdong province, using time-series data of Guangdong province in China in 1996–2011. Urbanization has been operationalized by population, economic, geographical landscape and social cultural dimensions. This study suggests that urbanization, though in general increases tourism development, does not affect different regions in Guangdong uniformly. Tourism development in different regions will receive different impacts from urbanization. Therefore, policy-makers, while promoting tourism development, should be aware of the different levels of impact of urbanization towards tourism development.