Measuring and Analysing the Impact Factors of China's Tourism Economic Resilience in the Context of a Major Shock

ABSTRACT Measuring and exploring the tourism economic resilience and the impact of tourism shocks allows the depiction of patterns that may assist in the prediction of economic trends. The study utilises official statistics from data such as the China Statistical Yearbook from 31 Chinese provinces between 2020 and 2022. Results suggest that tourism economic resilience is generally low, and demonstrates a polarised phenomenon, with a pyramid structure showing a gradual increase in the number of provinces with high to low tourism economic resilience. From a geographical perspective, tourism economic resilience tends to exhibit a decreasing trend from east to west, with the ‘low resilience effect in the central region’ moving towards the western regions. Insufficient investment in tourism spending power and marketing were obstacles for tourism economic resilience within the obstacle model. A fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis method derived four types of paths affecting tourism economic resilience: ‘infrastructure‐guaranteed’, ‘talent‐employment‐encouraging’, ‘innovation‐driven development’ and ‘market‐opening and interactive’. This study expands the application of niche theory in the field of socio‐economic resilience and constructs a new theoretical framework of resilience stratification, barrier model and path analysis. The research results provide important references for the government to optimise tourism economic policies, enterprises to improve market adaptability and regional coordinated development.