ICT adoption and tourism consumption among rural residents in China

Abstract

Little is known about the tourism consumption of the rural population in developing and emerging countries. This note fills the gap by investigating how information and communication technology (ICT) adoption influences tourism participation decisions and expenditure of rural residents in China. We estimate the data of 11,000 samples from the China Labor-force Dynamic Survey data, using both recursive bivariate probit and treatment effects models. Findings reveal that ICT adoption increases the probability of tourism participation amongst rural Chinese residents by 18.6% but decreases the expenditure of tourism participants by 442 Yuan/capita on average. We also show that ICT adoption empowers rural women for tourism consumption. Our findings highlight the importance of improving the rural ICT infrastructure and promoting ICT adoption amongst rural residents to boost rural tourism consumption and social welfare.