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CONCLUSION
Despite the belief that tourism development will positively affect a national economy, not many studies have
empirically examined a causal relationship between tourism and economic growth. What's more, empirical findings
based on previous studies suggested the need for continuous inspections on the relationship between tourism and
economic growth using various destination countries for the purpose of generalization. On the other hand, there also
2007 Annual International CHRIE Conference & Exposition
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exist very few academic papers in the tourism research literature investigating the causality between tourism and
exchange rate and between tourism and exports. This study contributes to the tourism development research area by
examining the casual relationship among tourism development, exchange rate, exports and economic growth using
data from four Asian tourist destinations, namely China, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, based on a
multivariate analysis of the Granger causality. Cointegration tests show the presence of a long-run relationship
among four factors in Korea and Taiwan. Results of causality analyses between tourism and economic growth
demonstrate that tourism development can serve as an “engine” of economic growth in Singapore and Taiwan, but
cannot lead to economic growth in China and Korea. Moreover, economic growth can enhance tourism expansion in
Korea and Taiwan, but no economy-led tourism development exists in China and Singapore. In other words, we still
obtain mixed results regarding the tourism-led economic growth hypothesis.
Nonetheless, causality test results further validate the argument by Kim et al. (2006) that the mixed results
regarding the existence of the tourism-led economic growth may be due to the level of openness and travel
restriction and the size of a national economy in the destination countries. However, empirical outcomes based on
this study suggest that it may be more suitable to measure the size of economy in terms of population and GDP
rather than per capita GDP. Moreover, whether tourism expansion can boost economic growth also relies on a
country’s degree of dependence of economic development on tourism. The crucial role of the exchange rate in
contributing to the national economy, tourism and exports is identified in this study as well. Particularly, the
exchange rate acts as a significant growth factor of tourism development in Korea and Taiwan, and reinforces export
growth in China, Singapore and Korea. Among three factors (tourism, exchange rate and exports) in Korea, it is
found that the exchange rate actually plays the most important role in improving the national economy. Different
from the previous empirical work, this study incorporates some tourism-related mega events, such as the Asian
financial crisis, the earthquake and the SARS outbreak, into investigation and evaluates their impact on tourism
development, economic activity, exchange rates and exports in China, Singapore, Korea and Taiwan. Consequently,
we observe that the SARS outbreak in 2003 damaged the tourism development in both China and Taiwan. In
addition to the SARS outbreak, the 921 earthquake also injured the Taiwanese tourism expansion. The Asian
financial crisis is found to have a significant effect on export growth in Korea as well as exchange rate in Singapore.
The 911 terrorist attacks also damaged the tourism expansion in all four Asian tourist destinations, although the
negative impact was not statistically significant.
Finally, although the theory and empirical evidence suggest a strong link between tourism and economic
growth, the direction of the causality between the two factors is still under debate due to the mixed empirical results
regarding the economy-led tourism development and the tourism-led economic growth from various countries. In
comparison, this study provides a promising future research direction for the tourism development research area.
Instead of investigating the direction of the causality between economic and tourism growth, we find that examining
the casual relationship between tourism and exports may offer a more consistent and generalized conclusion. It is
showed that export growth can robustly strengthen tourism expansion, i.e. the existence of the export-led tourism
growth, in all four Asian tourist destinations. However, it is worth noting that empirical findings in this study should
be interpreted with caution. For example, data from China and Singapore are only available over a limited nine-year
and twelve-year period, respectively. Moreover, the support of the export-led tourism growth in China, Singapore,
South Korea and Taiwan could be due to the export-oriented economy in those four countries. In other words,
whether the export-led tourism growth can be found only in those countries characterized by the export-oriented
economy deserves a further exploration.
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International Journal of
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Balaguer, L. and Cantavella-Jorda, M. (2002). Tourism as a long-run economic growth factor: the Spanish case.
Applied Economics
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Chang, T.C. and Yeoh, B.S.A. (1999). New Asia-Singapore: communicating local cultures through global tourism.
Geoforum
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Chen, M.H. (2006). Macro and non-macro explanatory factors of Chinese hotel stock returns.
International Journal
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Chen, M.H., Jang, S.C. and Kim, W.G. (2007). The impact of the SARS outbreak on Taiwanese hotel stock
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