Exploring Intra-Island Population Mobility and Economic Resilience: The Case of Hainan Island, China

Abstract

Islands may be more resilient than we realize when responding to shocks. As COVID-19 lessens international tourism to islands, it is valuable to explore whether island recovery can be accredited to the interactive behaviors within the island. Therefore, this research takes 18 administrative regions within Hainan Island as the research object, uses population migration big data to show the intra-island interaction network, and focuses on the impact of population mobility on economic resilience under the pandemic shock. Overall, population mobility contributes to the recovery of economic resilience under the pandemic shock, but this effect is regionally heterogeneous between the economic circle and the ecological conservation area. During the study period, there is a local spatial autocorrelation between economic resilience and population mobility, showing sporadic scattered distributions of the H-H, H-L and L-L cluster. The research findings offer practical strategies to improve island resilience.