Report Title: Risk culture as a puzzle in tourism development: Long run effects of empirical disasters

Time: June 19th, 15:00-16:30 PM

Location: Conference Room 216, Main Building, Zhongguancun Campus

Reported by: Professor Futong of Guizhou University

Reported by:

Fu Tong, professor of School of Economics of Guizhou University, serves as the executive deputy editor in chief of Managerial and Decision Economics, and is responsible for the development of journals and issues related to special issues. At the same time, he served as the deputy editor in chief of International Review of Financial Analysis and International Review of Economics and Finance. Its research aims to develop New institutional economics, focusing on environmental regulation, corporate finance and other economic development/transformation issues. Published dozens of papers in renowned journals such as Ecological Economics, Journal of International Financial Market, Institutions and Money, International Review of Financial Analysis, and Journal of Futures Markets.

Introduction to report content:

Using a unique dataset from China, this paper shows that the intensity of epidemic disasters during the country’s last feudal period (1644–1895 AD) has promoted tourism businesses’ contemporary performance. Results remain robust when considering geography, institutions, culture, confounding factors, and potential endogeneity bias. Three sources of tourism performance are referenced: business census data from individual travel agencies, visit data at national parks, and tourism revenue data in Chinese prefectures. To explain this complex but apparently uniform finding, we perform causal mediation analysis to demonstrate the importance of the promotional effect by encouraging corporate risk taking with robustness to cultural shocks and fusion. Overall, historical epidemics can be a blessing from risk culture to promote modern tourism performance.

(Undertaken by: Department of Applied Economics, Research and Academic Center)