Impacts of haze weather on tourist arrivals and destination preference: Analysis based on Baidu Index of 73 scenic spots in Beijing, China

Environmental quality is an important factor affecting the tourism industry. As a world-famous tourist city, Beijing is seriously affected by haze weather. Tourists carefully consider haze weather and shortlist their destinations based on these considerations. It is thus important to analyze the impact of haze weather on tourist arrivals and examine whether haze weather affects tourists' destination preference for scenic spots. This study incorporates the tourism resource heterogeneity into the push-pull theory to construct a new theoretical framework of haze weather affecting tourism. Using the Baidu Index, we obtain the daily tourist arrivals data for 73 scenic spots (4A and 5A) in Beijing and construct the FE-OLS, IV-2SLS, and air-bin models to evaluate and analyze the effects of haze weather on tourist arrivals, preferences of scenic spots, and tourism economic losses. The following conclusions are drawn. First, from a regional perspective, haze weather has a significant and negative impact on tourist arrivals. Second, the degree of the effect on tourism is related to the severity of the haze. Moderate, heavy, and severe haze led to a reduction in tourist arrivals by 2.29%, 6.0%, and 14.77%, respectively. Third, haze weather changes the choice of tourist destination from preferred cultural and natural attractions to recreational attractions. Lastly, it is estimated that Beijing lost 5.22 million tourists and 8.95 billion yuan in tourism revenue due to haze from 2016 to 2018. This study also provides policy recommendations to help the tourism industry cope with haze weather and suggestions to expand and enrich the theoretical perspective of climate change and tourism industry research. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.