How does the integration of cultural and tourism industries impact the value added to tourism value chain: Evidences from Jiangsu Province of China

China has been fully implementing the policy of the cultural and tourism industrial integration since 2018. However, the value-added benefits of this policy are not prominent, and the relationship between industrial integration and the value added to the tourism value chain was seldom addressed by researchers. In the context of China’s high-quality development, it is necessary to conduct the impact of the integration of cultural and tourism industries on the value added to tourism value chain. This paper proposed four theoretical hypotheses and the corresponding econometric models based on the panel data from 2013 to 2020 in China’s Jiangsu Province. According to empirical results, the integration of cultural and tourism industries is spatially unbalanced, with notable imbalances between the south and the north. This paper identified a new connection between cultural and tourism integration and the tourism value chain. It is found that the integration of cultural and tourism industries can enhance the value added to tourism value chain either directly or indirectly through the information technology, with the direct effect being positively moderated by tourism agglomeration. Moreover, this paper may overturn how people generally think about the integration between cultural and tourism industries. It reveals a single-threshold effect that only when the integration of cultural and tourism industries reached a high level will it exert a positive effect. To be more specific, not all Chinese cities are suitable for implementing cultural and tourism integration, because the integration is likely to be ineffective in regions where the cultural industry is substantially less developed than the tourism industry.