Urban extreme climate impact on tourism development: evidence from China

While extreme climate events are recognised as a major threat to global tourism, existing research lacks generalisable findings and supply-side perspectives on post-disaster recovery. This study constructs a novel panel dataset of China's cities from 2005 to 2019 to estimate the impact of urban extreme climate on tourism development and its underlying mechanisms. The results indicate that urban extreme climate significantly reduces urban tourist arrivals and tourism revenue, whereas its effect on tourism investment is not significant. This adverse impact is particularly pronounced in eastern and central regions, cities with lower administrative levels, tourism-specialised cities, and cities endowed with natural tourism resources. Cities can effectively mitigate such negative effects by increasing fixed asset investment and fiscal expenditure. Furthermore, urban ecological resilience significantly mitigates the adverse effects; however, economic resilience's moderating effects are insignificant. Finally, urban extreme climate exerts persistent negative effects. The findings extend the application boundaries of adaptive expectation theory in tourism-climate studies and inform effective climate-adaptive tourism policies.