An Examination of the Impact of Climate Change on International Inbound Tourism: Insights From China

ABSTRACT Although inbound tourism growth has been facing an increasing threat from global climate change, there still exists insufficient understanding regarding the long‐term impacts of climate change on tourism demand in non‐Western contexts. By considering other main explanatory variables, which have been largely overlooked among extant literature, the study examined the impacts of climate change on the Chinese inbound tourism market using the generalized method of moments model and panel data spanning 30 years and across 20 countries. The results revealed that the relationship between a location's temperature and inbound tourism demand is negative and an increase in temperature resulted in a decrease in international visitors traveling to China. In addition to offering a more robust and reliable assessment of the relationship between climate change and inbound tourism demand, the research represents one of the early attempts to advance understandings of the long‐term impacts of climate change in non‐Western developing countries.