Tourism and rural income inequality: empirical evidence for China

This article uses the mediating effect model to explore tourism’s impact on rural income inequality and the underlying mechanism. For the first time, this article calculates the province-level rural Gini coefficients and Theil indexes to measure rural income inequality based on the income survey data of rural China. The results show that total tourism, domestic tourism and inbound tourism are all driving forces for increasing rural income inequality. The effects of total tourism and domestic tourism are statistically significant. Moreover, tourism significantly influences rural development represented by employment, education, income and consumption. Rural development significantly mediates tourism’s effects on rural income inequality. The effects of tourism on rural income inequality vary significantly across different rural development levels. This article also proposes a series of targeted policy implications, which can better serve China's sustainable tourism and rural development.