Productivity Evaluation of Tourism and Culture for Sustainable Economic Development: Analyzing South Korea’s Metropolitan Regions

Abstract

We analyzed the productivity of tourism- and culture-related economic activity in South Korea, adopting the Malmquist productivity index based on data envelopment analysis. We examined whether the productivity of tourism efficiently attracts financial investment. We used various objective indicators as the input and output variables of 16 metropolitan regions in South Korea between 2013 and 2018. To effectively understand the productivity of regions, the 16 metropolitan regions were categorized into four groups based on the ratio of financial independence and rate of city region, and regions were characterized as urbanized, traditional metropolitan, industrialized, or less developed. The findings reveal that the tourism industry in relatively less urbanized regions is more productive. Compared with other industries, public pre-investment and private investment strategies specific to tourism may yield more efficient results in terms of total production and employment. In other words, tourism may constitute a gateway to economic sustainability in less developed regions through the revitalization and/or balanced development of local structures.

Understanding the Evolution of Regional Tourism Efficiency: Through the Lens of Evolutionary Economic Geography

“…As DEA is unable to measure changes in economic performance over time, MI was developed [54]. MI is the change of total factor productivity (TFPC), which reflects the growth rate of tourism efficiency from time t to time t + 1 [1].…”

The Effect of the Image of Destinations on Household Income and Distribution: Evidence From China’s Tourist Cities

“…A good image can strengthen a city’s resource advantage and drive its development; such an image can be enhanced through government accreditation ( Smith, 2006 ) and investment ( Vanolo, 2015 ). Although existing literature has found that excellent tourism resources and intangible cultural heritage promote economic development ( Hampton, 1998 ; Holzner, 2011 ; Joun and Kim, 2020 ), only a few studies have provided evidence on the effect of the tourism development on income distribution. Some literature suggests that tourism is a strategic factor that boosts the local economy of regions and countries and reduces regional income inequality ( World Tourism Organisation, 2002 ; Li et al, 2016 ; Fang et al, 2020 ; Nguyen et al, 2020 ) and urban–rural income disparity ( Shi et al, 2020 ).…”

From Over-Tourism to Under-Tourism via COVID-19: Lessons for Sustainable Tourism Management

“…Some recent research has pondered upon alternative forms of destination tourism such as coastal/island tourism (Grilli et al, 2021; J. Liu et al, 2020a), edu-tourism (Alipour et al, 2020), community-based tourism (Lapeyre, 2010; Okazaki, 2008; Olya et al, 2018; Rasoolimanesh et al, 2017; Shunnaq et al, 2008), spiritual tourism (Cortese et al, 2019; Kato and Progano, 2017; Long and Nguyen, 2018; Saxena et al, 2020), and heritage tourism (Joun and Kim, 2020; Koren-Lawrence et al, 2020; Lai, 2020). Given that tourism was largely blamed for facilitating the spread of the novel coronavirus (Sharma et al, 2021c), the tourism scholarship has started focusing on the sustainability aspect of tourism activities since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic.…”