Tourism dependence and poverty alleviation thresholds in Chinese ethnic tourism

Questions persist on the relationship between tourism dependence and economic growth in ethnic tourism areas. This study addresses such gaps by constructing a threshold regression model based on socio-economic data from 2006 to 2019 for nine sites in Enshi Prefecture of central China. ArcGIS and other open-source data were also used to visualize changing tourism resources in the region. Findings suggest that tourism dependence (the ratio of tourism-based GDP to overall GDP) significantly promotes economic growth in ethnic minority areas. However, the positive influence of tourism dependence on economic growth appears dynamic and non-linear — rising at first before falling when tourism dependence exceeded a threshold of 34%, with effects varying by site and year. Methods and findings make crucial theoretical contributions to understanding tourism dependence and poverty alleviation linkages. This paper also highlights the importance of political support and balanced investment in diverse industries to minimize decreasing returns beyond tourism dependence thresholds in destinations worldwide. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: Supplementary material (Appendix 1) is available in the online version of this article at 10.1007/s11629-022-7479-2.