Assessing tourism efficiency and influencing factors in Anhui Province: A DEA-Malmquist approach

To promote the high-quality development of regional tourism and implement the strategy of building a strong tourism province, tourism efficiency across 16 prefecture-level cities in Anhui Province from 2011 to 2022 was evaluated using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)-Malmquist index. Influencing factors of tourism efficiency were further examined through a Tobit model. The results indicate that, from a static efficiency perspective, only Chizhou was strongly DEA efficient, while the remaining 15 cities were DEA inefficient. From a dynamic efficiency perspective, in the temporaldimension, the total factor productivity (TFP) index of Anhui Province’s tourism industry demonstrated an overall upward trend, with an average annual growth rate of 11.6% in tourism efficiency in the prefecture-level city dimension, an overall increase in tourism efficiency was observed, although variations in growth magnitude were identified. In the regional dimension, the Central Anhui region exhibited the highest tourism efficiency, followed by Southern Anhui, with Northern Anhui displaying the lowest efficiency levels. Economic development and transportation accessibility were found to promote tourism efficiency, while the degree of openness and tourism resource endowment exerted a suppressive effect. Industrial structure was not found to have a statistically significant impact on tourism efficiency.