Interaction and Impact of the Tourism Industry on High-Speed Railway in China

This study aims to validate the high-speed railway (HSR)-tourism relationship in China’s Yangtze River Economic Belt area. We measure the impact of tourism on HSR through multiple regression and two-stage least squares estimation. The results prove that tourism responds to HSR by building tourism attractions around HSR stations; the tourism development level impacts HSR station location selection. For every unit increase in the attraction quantity within a 21–50 km buffer zone of an HSR station, the number of HSR stations increased by 0.012864. The results can contribute to issues related to strategic HSR planning and tourism development.