LOCAL OFFICIALS AND REGIONAL TOURISM ECONOMIES

This study adopts the paradigm of upper echelons theory (UET) and establishes a novel dataset covering the main characteristics of prefecture-level party secretaries in southwest China to investigate the association between local top officials’ traits and regional tourism economies. Empirical results show that a party secretary’s education and work experience significantly influence the development of regional tourism economies, and in most cases these influences are positive. These effects vary as the level of regional economic development and the quality of tourism resources change. These effects may be different for autonomous regions (for ethnic minorities) and non-autonomous regions. We find an inverted U-shaped relationship between the age of party secretaries and the performance of tourism economies. As an initial effort to identify the impact of regional officials, this study contributes to tourism economics and provides valuable implications for regional tourism development.