Spatial and temporal differences of Chinese tourists’ travel demands to North Korea

Border tourism plays an important and positive role in international economic and cultural cooperation, and the tourism cooperation relationship between China and North Korea has lasted for more than 30 years. China has become the country with the largest number of tourists to North Korea. However, because the relevant data of tourism to North Korea are not public, it also brings difficulties to the further study. This paper based on the Baidu Index of 31 provinces and regions in China and discusses the temporal and spatial distribution characteristics and influencing factors of travel demands to North Korea. The findings from the research are as follows. First, the travel demands from 2011 to 2018 showed an overall trend of initial increase followed by later decrease. The seasonal difference is significant. The peak season is longer than the off-season. Secondly, on the whole, the travel demands to North Korea showed a spatial agglomeration effect, and the provinces with high demands or low demands gather significantly in space. Taking “Hu line” as the boundary, the east is higher than the west. The hot spot areas and cold spot areas gradually transition from east to west. Thirdly, holidays, population, GDP, per capita disposable income, Internet penetration and education are the main influencing factors of tourism demand to North Korea. By using Baidu Index, this paper overcomes the bottleneck of inaccessible tourism data to North Korea. At the same time, from the perspective of tourist source countries, this paper discusses the spatial-temporal differentiation and influencing factors of travel demands in terms of geographical space, and compares it with existing studies, expanding the research framework of China’s outbound tourism.