Rural Tourism and Rural Economic Development

Rural tourism is considered an essential tool to promote rural economic development through the integrated development of the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries. Based on a natural village-level panel data set of 39 villages in Lincang City, Yunnan, China from 2015 to 2021, this paper uses the difference-in-differences method with a propensity score matching approach (PSM-DID) to investigate the impact of rural tourism development on rural economic development in villages. The research results show that rural tourism positively affects gross income and poverty reduction in rural areas. However, the results do not show significant evidence of transforming the rural industrial structure. Based on the results, promoting policies for rural tourism should also be implemented in other regions in China, and additional policies should be considered to promote industrial structure transformation.