Chinese tourism enterprises’ host country choice for overseas investment: influencing factors, interactive effects, and national heterogeneity

Despite being the second-largest overseas investment country and the largest outbound tourist source country in the world, China’s overseas investment in tourism has seldom been discussed. We performed a negative binomial regression on a sample of 73 host countries of China’s overseas tourism investment to systematically identify relevant influencing factors and interactive effects from 2004 to 2018 via national heterogeneity test on countries along the Belt and Road (B&R). Results indicate that, (1) Chinese tourism enterprises’ overseas investment had clear market-seeking and strategy-seeking motivations but no significant tourism resource–seeking motivation. (2) Chinese tourism enterprises’ overseas investment favoured regions with a sound institutional environment, showing significant national heterogeneity in general; specifically, Chinese tourism enterprises’ overseas investment featured an institutional risk preference for countries along the B&R and institutional risk aversion for non-B&R countries.(3) Chinese tourism enterprises’ overseas investment exhibited institutional preferences and path dependence due to multiple investment motivations and bilateral political relations during location selection. Strong and stable bilateral relations were complementary to the host country’s institutional quality, namely mutual high-level government visits. International sister city relations between China and B&R countries could also compensate for the impact of poor bilateral relations on host countries’ institutional quality.