The Impact of Air Quality on Inbound Tourist Arrivals over China Based on Grey Relational Analysis

Abstract

Air pollution has a significant impact on tourism; however, research in this area is still limited. In this study, we applied grey relational analysis to panel data from 31 provinces in China and evaluated the relationship between air quality and inbound tourist arrivals. The study focused on provincial-level disparities for the different key air quality evaluation standards during 2009–2012 and 2013–2019. For instance, we considered PM10, SO2, NO2 and the excellent and good ratings of Air Pollution Index (API) during 2009–2012 and the additional PM2.5, CO, O3 and the excellent and good ratings of Air Quality Index (AQI) from 2013 to 2019. Results indicate that: (1) Inbound tourist arrivals are significantly and positively affected by ambient air quality, and the impact from 2013 to 2019 was greater than that from 2009 to 2012; (2) there is regional diversity in inbound tourist arrivals, and the impact of the different air quality indicators varies; (3) inbound tourists showed greater sensitivity to air pollution under the AQI standard; (4) the impact of air quality indicators on the inbound tourist arrivals shows grey relational order, and the concentration of PM2.5, PM10 and SO2 have less impact than NO2, CO and O3 on changes in tourism numbers; (5) consistency in the air quality impact on foreign tourists and compatriot tourists from HK, MO and TW varies by air quality indicators. This study highlights the need for appropriate measures to improve air quality for high-quality and sustainable development of inbound tourism.

Regional Information Management of Higher Education Based on Network Security and Grey Relational Analysis

“…When formulating a reasonable educational information resource construction policy, it can serve as a guide for decision-making in areas such as co-construction and sharing of high-quality educational information resources, improving educational resource utilization, and establishing regional information core resources. In the traditional centralized control mode, information servers in one or more regions search for grid resource instances of specific university information resources, i.e., the local university resource information database registers local university resource information with the regional university information server, and grid users register local university resource information with the regional university information server [28].…”

Fine-Granularity Urban Microclimate Monitoring Using Wearable Multi-Source Sensors

“…In order to objectively evaluate the environmental quality of the urban environment and understand the actual situation of urban environmental quality, the above six basic pollutant indexes can be used as evaluation factors. Based on the environmental quality standards in Table 3, the evaluation standard set and weight set of each pollution factor are established, and then the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method is used to objectively and comprehensively evaluate the urban atmospheric environmental quality [24,25].…”

The Influence Factors of Economic Development of Tourism Industry

“…Relevant studies are as follows. Zhang et al [4] applied gray correlation analysis to panel data of Chinese provinces and assessed the connections between air quality and the volume of incoming tourists. They found that ambient air quality had a noteworthy and positive impact on inbound tourists.…”