Abstract

We estimate the factors of inbound tourism in China by using a panel gravity model equation of 178 origin countries from 1995 to 2012. We find the cultural dummy variables like common language, common border and religion driving the tourism flows to China. Besides, the climate variables like annual average temperature and cloud cover play a significant factors in affecting the tourist arrivals in China. An interesting result we have found that, cloud has a positive and negative relationship in country of destination and origin respectively implying that, cloudy variable in the country of origin has a negative impact on international tourist flows in China. In the contrary, cloud variable is observed positive relation in China. 

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