Features and Evolution of Spatial Economic Effects of Regional Tourism in Hunan Province, China

By using the method of variation coefficient, Gini coefficient and multivariate Moran’s I, this paper reveals the features and evolution of spatial economic effects of intra-regional disparity and extra-spatial correlation of tourism in Hunan province from 2001 to 2010. It is demonstrated that shrinking regional disparity of tourism does not necessarily imply that tourism development will narrow the gap of regional economic development. The results suggest that the regional difference of tourism is reduced continuously in the province, that only indicates that the effects to enlarge the regional economic difference are weakening. But the concentrative degree of tourism spatial distribution is decreasing, indicating that the influences of tourism development on adjusting spatial concentration of regional economy are changing from the effects of enlarging the economic gap to the ones of narrowing the gap, and the effects of enlarging the gap are weakened continuously, while the ones of narrowing the gap increasing. On the other hand, as a whole, extra-spatial correlation of tourism does not significantly enlarge the regional development disparity, but the increasing local spatial correlation of tourism enlarges the disparity of local regional development because of strengthening the formed pattern of regional economic disparity.