The Coordinated Relationship Between the Tourism Economy System and the Tourism Governance System: Empirical Evidence from China

The development of tourism governance (TG) is influenced by the tourism economy (TE), and the development of TE is guaranteed by tourism governance. This study investigates the development levels of the tourism economy and tourism governance, as well as their interactive coordination in 31 Chinese provinces (including municipalities and autonomous regions) from 2012 to 2021. First, the vertical and horizontal differentiation method was employed to measure tourism economy and tourism governance development levels. Second, the Panel Vector Autoregression (PVAR) model was adopted to examine the Granger causality and the interactive effects between the tourism economy and tourism governance. Third, the coupled coordination model, kernel density estimation, and Markov chain model were combined to explore the degree of coordinated development and the spatio-temporal evolutionary trend of TE-TG. The findings reveal the following: (1) The development level of the tourism economy exhibits a fluctuating upward trend, with its spatial distribution pattern demonstrating a distinct coastal-to-inland decreasing gradient. Meanwhile, tourism governance shows a steady improvement trajectory marked by significant regional disparities. (2) A long-term equilibrium relationship has been established between the tourism economy and tourism governance, with bidirectional Granger causality observed between the two systems. (3) The coupled coordination between the tourism economy and tourism governance has progressively increased. However, the development level of tourism governance still lags behind that of the tourism economy. The eastern and central regions demonstrate significantly higher TE-TG coordination levels compared to the western and northeastern regions.