The impact of national strategies on the high-quality development of the Yellow River Cultural Tourism Belt -- A quasi-natural experiment based on the perspective of "supply expansion-market transformation"

Abstract

Building a Yellow River cultural tourism belt with international influence is an important component of the major national strategy for the Yellow River Basin. Based on panel data from prefecture-level cities and above nationwide from 2011 to 2023, this paper uses the elevation of the strategy to a major national strategy in 2019 as a quasi-natural experiment and employs a difference-in-differences model to examine its policy effects. The study finds that the average promotional effect of the national strategy on the comprehensive development index of cultural tourism in the Yellow River region is not significant; structurally, it exhibits a "disconnection between supply expansion and market transformation" characteristic, with significant improvements in cultural supply and basic support, but the transformation of the tourism market and ecological carrying capacity have not improved simultaneously; the policy effect emerged in the short term from 2020 to 2021 but did not persist after 2022. The research indicates that administrative resource investment does not automatically translate into stable tourism demand and comprehensive performance. The construction of the Yellow River cultural tourism belt should shift to a value realization mechanism that emphasizes content production, route coordination, and ecological constraints equally.