Impacts of Symmetric and Asymmetric Tourism Activities on Economic Development: Evidence from China’s Provinces

This study uses bootstrap symmetric and asymmetric multivariate panel Granger causality test to examine the relationship between international tourism receipts (ITRs) and economic growth in China. Our preliminary findings support evidence for the asymmetric panel causality test, which examines hidden causality between variables, displaying that there is causality from the positive shocks of ITRs to the positive shocks of real gross domestic product (RGDP) in Fujian, Jiangsu, and Tianjin. Hainan has significant two-way Granger causality based on RGDP and ITRs. These results imply that the hidden tourism-led growth hypothesis is valid in Fujian, Hainan, Jiangsu, Shandong, and Tianjin.