Spatiotemporal Evolution and Influencing Factors of Tourism Economic Resilience under the Impact of COVID-19—A Case Study of Coastal Cities in China

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the economic operations of many cities worldwide. Because tourism depends on migratory qualities, it has been severely constrained by the pandemic, which has affected the tourism business in several places. The research period for this paper is 2019–2021, and a comprehensive analysis of the spatiotemporal evolution pattern and influencing factors of the tourism economic resilience of China’s coastal cities is conducted using the resistance index, Theil index, spatial autocorrelation analysis, and geographic detector model with the goal of deepening the theory of tourism economic resilience and providing a reference for the sustainable development of tourism. The results revealed several trends. First, in terms of temporal changes, the fluctuation trend of tourism’s economic resilience in each city before and after the pandemic had a certain degree of stability and convergence, with only a few cities showing significant differences in their amplitude of fluctuations in 2021. Second, in the spatial pattern, the regions with high resilience and relatively high resilience were mainly concentrated in the western, northeastern, and eastern regions, and the northeastern-eastern regions with relatively high resilience were gradually developed in the agglomeration and a contiguous pattern. Third, the influencing factors of tourism’s economic resilience before and after the pandemic, despite differences, are still largely affected by the combined influence of the city’s economic level, industrial structure, tourism resource endowment, and other factors.