Study on the Influence of Cultural Communication on the Development of the Visitor Economy

Abstract

This study includes China and 197 countries from 1995 to 2019 as the research subjects. It considers trade in cultural products and inbound tourism as proxy variables of cultural communication and the visitor economy to analyze cultural communication’s impact on the visitor economy’s development and finds that cultural communication significantly promotes the visitor economy’s development. A robustness test of the benchmark regression results was conducted using the shrinktail treatment, substitute variable, and subsample selection methods. Cultural products were divided into three types, and the influence of trade in different cultural products on inbound tourism varies. Forty-nine categories had the largest promoting effect on inbound tourism, followed by thirty-seven categories and ninety-seven categories. There are significant differences in the influence of cultural product exports on inbound tourism in different cultural circles and continents. The influence effect within each circle was in the following order: Indian cultural circles (0.49), Islamic cultural circles (0.42), East Asian cultural circles (0.40), Western cultural circles (0.39), and Eastern European cultural circles (0.33). From the aspect continents, the export of cultural products to Europe significantly impacted China’s inbound tourism, followed by Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Finally, countermeasures and suggestions are proven to promote the visitor economy’s development. This study provides a reference for the cultural inheritance and development of the global tourism economy.