Jiawen Express | Internet use and family cultural tourism consumption——Also on the feasibility of residents' consumption upgrade under the popularization of the Internet

Liu Zhen

Doctoral student at the School of Business Administration, East China Normal University

Yang Yong

Deputy Dean (presiding over the work) of the School of Business Administration, East China Normal University, Professor and Doctoral Supervisor

1

Origin of research

In reality, first, the consumption rate of Chinese residents has been at a low level for a long time. According to the World Bank's World Development Index statistics, between 2000 and 2010, the consumption rate of Chinese residents dropped from 46.7% to 35.6%. Although it rebounded to 38.7% in 2018, whether compared with the same period in western developed countries such as the United States and Germany, or compared with the same period in developing countries such as India and Brazil, the consumption rate of Chinese residents is still significantly low. How to effectively release the potential of domestic demand has become the proper meaning of accelerating the construction of a dual-cycle development pattern. Second, cultural tourism consumption is an important carrier for residents to pursue a better life. As China's imitation wave consumption phase has basically come to an end, people are paying more and more attention to quality consumption and service consumption, and spending on culture and tourism consumption is increasing. The "Opinions on Further Stimulating the Potential of Cultural and Tourism Consumption" issued by the General Office of the State Council also clearly pointed out that "we should follow the trend of the people's consumption improvement and transformation, and make efforts from both sides of supply and demand to continuously stimulate the potential of cultural and tourism consumption." Third, the Internet has triggered systemic changes in production and consumption. At present, China's Internet penetration rate has exceeded 70%, and the Internet and the cultural tourism industry have also achieved a transition from shallow connection to deep integration, and new formats and models have been continuously spawned. At the beginning of 2020, although the outbreak of the COVID-19 pneumonia caused a complete suspension of offline services, residents could also meet their spiritual and cultural needs through "cloud viewing exhibitions" and "cloud tourism". Then, a potential question is, given other conditions unchanged, can Internet use improve the level of household cultural tourism consumption, and then promote the upgrading of household consumption?

On the theoretical level, on the one hand, the existing research mainly continues the analytical framework of the classic consumption theory, and discusses the factors that affect the family's cultural tourism consumption, but generally ignores the particularity of cultural tourism consumption. In fact, for a long time, the supply and demand information in the cultural tourism market is not symmetrical, and there is a time lag in information transmission between service providers and consumers. At the same time, due to the high reliance on business premises, sales channels and operating hours, traditional cultural and tourism consumption activities also face high transaction costs, and the two parties may not be able to achieve supply and demand matching after spending a certain amount of transaction costs. Therefore, it is necessary to use technical means to overcome the obstacles in the process of family cultural tourism consumption. On the other hand, although some scholars have begun to discuss the impact of Internet use on family cultural and tourism consumption, they have paid more attention to the relationship between the Internet and family cultural and tourism consumption intentions, but have not yet provided empirical evidence that the Internet affects actual consumption behavior, nor has it been A complete analytical framework is formed to reveal the micro-mechanism of the Internet's impact on family cultural and tourism consumption. More importantly, the existing research only examines the relationship between Internet use and family cultural and tourism consumption. Under certain budget constraints, if the increase in cultural and tourism consumption caused by Internet use is at the expense of other consumption, then the The dual goals of promoting consumption growth and improving consumption structure cannot be achieved.

Our research team has already started research on the development of digital economy and tourism economy, and has formed a series of achievements and published monographs. Taking the opportunity of participating in Professor Yang Yong's National Social Science Fund Project "Research on the Collaborative Development of Tourism Industry' Virtual-Physical" Clusters , we use the data of China Family Panel Studies ( CFPS) to study the impact of Internet usage on family cultural tourism. The impact of consumption provides a theoretical basis for understanding the role of Internet use in household consumption, and also provides an effective starting point for cultivating new kinetic energy for consumption growth.

2

Research Process and Discovery

How to theoretically define the impact of Internet use on family cultural tourism consumption is a focus of this paper. To this end, we take the information channel effect and convenient transaction effect of the Internet as the starting point, and systematically analyze the reasons why the Internet promotes family cultural tourism consumption by alleviating information asymmetry and reducing transaction costs. Further, considering that different families have differences in information processing ability and product transaction needs, we focus on the adjustment mechanism of education level and income level on the above relationship.

Figure 3 : CFPS2020 (the 5th round of follow-up survey) summary questionnaire directory home page

How to carry out a rigorous, credible and self-consistent empirical test is another focus of this paper. First of all, in the process of data cleaning, we found that, unlike other consumptions, the cultural and tourism consumption expenditure of a large number of households in the survey year was 0, that is , the data distribution of cultural and tourism consumption was highly skewed . Existing studies often ignore this feature and directly use ordinary least squares (OLS) for regression analysis, or delete samples with a value of 0, but no matter what method is adopted, it may lead to biased estimation results. To this end, this paper uses a two-part model to effectively solve the problem of invalid estimation caused by the sample distribution. Secondly, causal inference is the focus of tourism economic research, but the application of related methods in micro-domain research is still relatively rare. In order to get as "clean" estimation results as possible, we use propensity score matching (PSM) and conditional mixed process (CMP) to overcome sample self-selection, missing variables and reverse causality. The estimation bias caused by the problem is improved, thereby improving the robustness of the estimation results. Thirdly, in order to avoid one-size-fits-all conclusions and make targeted policy recommendations, based on the characteristics of China as a big country, we divide the samples based on differences in the level of economic development between regions, differences in Internet penetration, and differences in the ownership of tourist attractions. Heterogeneity analysis and empirical support for narrowing the gap in household welfare between regions. Finally, unlike existing studies that only focus on cultural and tourism consumption, we systematically evaluate the role of Internet usage in the overall consumption and consumption structure of households by constructing indicators, thus realizing the transformation from "seeing the problem locally" to "seeing the problem as a whole". Perspective shift.

The main conclusions are as follows: First, the use of the Internet has a significant promoting effect on the probability and level of family cultural tourism consumption, and after overcoming the potential endogenous problems, its influence remains stable. Second, the promotion effect of Internet use on family cultural tourism consumption comes from the information channel effect and the convenient transaction effect, and the increase in education level and income level is conducive to enhancing the influence effect of Internet use. Third, the analysis of regional heterogeneity shows that in the central and western regions, regions with low Internet penetration rate, and regions with high scenic spots, Internet use has a more obvious role in promoting family cultural tourism consumption. Fourth, the extended analysis found that the use of the Internet did not affect the proportion of household spending on necessities, but it brought about a significant increase in the level and proportion of service consumption represented by cultural and tourism consumption, which in turn helped households to expand consumption expenditures. Promote service-oriented transformation of consumption structure.

3

Research Contribution

First, the innovation of research perspective. Existing studies have discussed the impact of Internet use on household consumption in general, but studies on high-income elastic consumption of culture and tourism are rare. This paper introduces Internet use into the analysis framework of family cultural and tourism consumption, thus enriching the literature base of related research.

Second, the innovation of research content. This paper deeply explores the effect of Internet use on family cultural tourism consumption, and focuses on the moderating mechanism of education level and income level on the relationship between the two. Further, this paper examines the impact of Internet use on household consumption and structure, and finds that the expansion of cultural tourism consumption caused by Internet use effectively promotes the improvement of the overall consumption level of households and the service-oriented transformation of consumption structure.

Third, the innovation of research methods. This paper not only uses a two-part model to effectively solve the estimation bias caused by the highly skewed sample distribution, but also uses the propensity score matching method and the conditional mixed process estimation method to overcome the potential endogeneity problem and effectively improve the reliability of the obtained conclusions. sex.

4

Thoughts and thanks

In recent years, with the gradual maturity of the research paradigm, the tendency of tourism economic research to approach mainstream economic research has become more and more obvious. However, in this process, the phenomenon of talking about tourism, insufficient comparison with the reality of economic development, and relatively lagging research methods still exist. In fact, we can only form a dialogue and interaction with mainstream disciplines when we discuss issues such as "tourism demand", "cultural tourism consumption" and "competitiveness of the cultural tourism industry" in the context of the country's economic and social development. As a useful attempt to do this, this article, on the one hand, based on the background of digital economy development and dual-cycle construction, deeply discusses the impact of Internet usage on family cultural tourism consumption, and on the other hand, fully considers cultural tourism consumption and other household consumption The relationship between the two, examines the impact of Internet use on the overall household consumption and structural changes from a global perspective, and responds to the practical question of whether relying on the Internet to cultivate new kinetic energy for consumption growth. At present, the world has undergone great changes unseen in a century. There are a series of major economic facts and phenomena in China's transformation and development that urgently require theoretical explanations. This requires us to keep in line with international standards, tell China's stories well, and jointly promote China's reality. research output.

We have reported the first draft of the paper in the "Tourism Economy and Finance" sub-forum of the 2020 "Tourism Journal" China Tourism Research Annual Conference, and we were honored to be selected as "Excellent Conference Paper". We would like to thank the teachers for their valuable suggestions and recognition. . At the same time, we sincerely thank anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions. With the help of reviewers, we continue to polish the paper and improve the quality of the paper. Finally, we are also very grateful to the teachers in the editorial department. Your meticulous review and proofreading made the article published smoothly.

When the article was published, we were delighted to learn that our current round of the National Social Science Fund project was successfully concluded on time. This article is not only the result of the project, but also a new starting point for further research.

Cite this article

Liu Zhen, Yang Yong. Internet Use and Family Cultural Tourism Consumption——Also on the Feasibility of Residents' Consumption Upgrade under the Popularization of the Internet [J]. Journal of Tourism, 2022, 37(2): 75-93.

[LIU Zhen, YANG Yong. Internet use and household culture and tourism consumption: A study on the role of the wide- spread use of the Internet on promoting consumption upgrading in China[J]. Tourism Tribune , 2022, 37(2): 75-93.

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Editor in charge|| Wang Jing

Responsible proofreading|| Liu Lu

Technical Editor|| Guo Qiuqi, Graduate Student, School of Management, Shandong University

Voice anchor|| Liu Zhen Ph.D. candidate of School of Business Administration, East China Normal University

Cover image credit ||

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