制度松绑、市场活力激发与旅游经济发展——来自中国文化体制改革的证据

Deregulation, Market Vitality and Tourism Economy Development: Evidence from Chinese Cultural System Reform

旅游业作为现代服务业的重要组成部分,是带动地区经济增长和实现产业优化升级的“绿色”驱动力。借助于中国文化体制改革的“准自然实验”,本文采用中国283个地级市2002—2016年间的面板数据和双重差分方法,首次评估了文化体制改革对地区旅游业发展的影响。研究发现,文化体制改革激发了市场活力,促进了文化产业和旅游产业的融合,带动了地区旅游业的发展。随着时间的推移,这种带动效应呈现出越来越强的递增趋势。具体地,文化体制改革通过丰富文化旅游产品和服务以及住宿餐饮等配套产业的发展,提高了地区过夜旅客人数和收入,进而使试点地区的人均国内旅游收入、人均国内旅游人次、人均国内外旅游总收入和人均国内外旅游接待总人次得到显著提升。而且,在那些旅游资源越丰富、旅游公共服务水平越高的地区,这种带动效应越强。本文的发现不仅为文化体制改革进一步在全国范围内的实施推广提供了重要依据,而且为地区产业的转型升级和区域经济平衡提供了重要的政策启示。

An important part of the modern service industry,tourism has been one of the fastest-growing emerging industries in recent years.Since the reform and opening up policy was introduced,China s tourism industry has undergone tremendous changes.With rapid and constant growth in both the number of tourists and tourist expenditures over the past two decades,the tourism industry has become the pillar industry of the national economy.However,due to the shackles of the traditional system,China s tourism market is not effectively developed and lacks adequate vitality.To change the long-term inefficient cultural management system and promote the development of the cultural industry,the Communist Party of China announced a reform of the cultural system at its 16th Congress with the purposes of establishing a market system,changing the functions of the government,deepening internal reform,and cultivating the market.In June 2003,nine provinces and cities,including Beijing,Shanghai,Zhejiang,Guangdong,Shenzhen,Chongqing,Xi an,Lijiang,and Shenyang,and 35 cultural units were identified as the first batch of pilot areas and units for reform.In March 2006,at a working conference on national cultural system reform held by the central government,an additional 89 areas and 170 units were added as pilots and promotional units of cultural system reform.These two trials involved 119 prefecture-level cities and covered 36%of prefecture-level administrative areas in China.Although the original intention of this reform was not to develop the tourism industry,the reform eliminated a series of regulations,which greatly released grassroots innovation,promoted the prosperity of the cultural tourism industry,and led to the development of regional tourism and regional economic growth.With the quasi-natural experiment of China s cultural system reform,the panel data of 283 prefecture-level cities in China from 2002 to 2016,and DID methods,this paper evaluates the effect of cultural system reform on China s regional tourism economy.We find that the reform increased the number of overnight tourists through the development of supporting industries,such as cultural tourism products and services,accommodations,and catering,which further increased the number of tourist trips and tourism revenue.With the passage of time,this driving effect has shown an increasingly strong trend.Moreover,in areas with rich tourism resources and high levels of tourism public service,the effect is stronger.The marginal contributions of this paper are as follows.First,as far as we know,this paper is the first to examine the effect of deregulation on regional tourism from the perspective of cultural system reform,enriching the study of the factors affecting the tourism economy and expanding the literature evaluating cultural system reform.Second,cultural system reform has had an exogenous effect on the development of regional tourism,enabling us to identify the net effect of the reform using the DID method.Third,the findings of this paper indicate that if a more relaxed and free cultural system is implemented and market vitality is continuously released,prosperity of the regional cultural industry and tourism economy can result.This paper offers several insights.First,the results provide an important basis for further cultural system reform nationwide.Second,the results provide a reference and inspiration for China s industrial upgrade.A liberal cultural system can not only achieve prosperity for the cultural industry but also fully release market vitality to stimulate emerging industries.Third,considering the imbalances in China s regional economies,the conclusions also contribute to the introduction of regional balance policies.In reality,with more unique and superior tourism resources,the central and western regions are seriously limited by institutional constraints,which means that the advantages of these regions have not been reasonably used.Through the findings of this paper,it is clear that the rational layout of cultural system reform can not only realize development of the tourism economy but also promote balanced regional development.