The Spatiotemporal Patterns and Driving Factors of Culture and Tourism Listed Companies in China

Abstract

The integration of culture and tourism is the key measure for China in transforming and upgrading the tourism industry. It could promote the sustainable development by reducing the consumption of tourism resources. During the implementation of this policy, culture and tourism listed companies play a leading role, as they are the major force in the cultural and tourism industry, and their spatiotemporal characteristics shows the level of development of the cultural and tourism industry and the economy in different regions. Taking the culture and tourism companies as the research objects, this paper analyzed the spatiotemporal patterns and evolution mechanism of culture and tourism listed companies over a long time scale. The results showed that: (1) the number of newly added listed companies in the cultural, tourism, and cultural and tourism categories basically showed the same change trend, and the developing process could be divided into three periods, namely embryonic (1978–1992), exploration (1992–2006) and growth (2007–2021). (2) The spatial distribution of Chinese culture and tourism listed companies developed from “single core” to “one core and multiple stars”, and gradually stabilized into a spatial pattern of “three cores”. The center of gravity was located in the southeast of China, moving from south to north in the shape of a “Z”. (3) Traffic service, government financial strength, financial environment and tourism resource endowment are the main factors affecting the spatial distribution of Chinese culture and tourism listed companies. Compared with the impact of a single influencing factor, the interactions between various factors are much stronger, especially the combinations of tourism resource endowment and another three factors, namely traffic service, communication development and economic development.