The enhancement effect of digital economy on high-quality tourism development from the perspective of spatial spillover

The digital economy stimulates new momentum for tourism development and is an important engine for promoting the high-quality development of the tourism industry. Based on the analysis of the theoretical mechanism concerning the impact of digital economy on the high-quality development of tourism, 30 provinces and cities from 2011 to 2019 were taken as the research object, and the entropy weight TOPSIS method was used to calculate the comprehensive index of the digital economy and the high quality development, with the impact of the former on the latter empirically tested based on the spatial Durman model, and its spatial spillover effect decomposed. The results show that:(1) During the study period, the high-quality development level of Chinese digital economy and tourism industry increased steadily, with a significantly positive correlation detected between the two. The pattern of high-quality development of digital economy and tourism underwent a transformation from the pattern "high in the east and low in the west" into one of "collapse in the north". (2) The digital economy has a positive effect on the high-quality development of tourism. On the one hand, the digital economy improves the competitiveness of tourism enterprises from both supply and demand sides, which directly improves the quality of tourism development by improving tourists' satisfaction. On the other hand, the technology spillover and knowledge spillover of the digital economy promote the digital transformation of the tourism industry, strengthen regional learning capabilities, and thus indirectly improve the quality of tourism development. (3) From the perspective of spatial spillover, the digital economy has a significantly positive spillover effect on the high quality of tourism, and the heterogeneity analysis finds that there exist significantly positive spillover effects between east and west; a significantly negative spillover effect is detected in the northeast, and an insignificant effect is observed in the central region.