In the context of ongoing digitalization, smart tourism (ST) is playing an increasingly prominent role in promoting the sustainable development of tourism enterprises. While prior research has largely emphasized macro-level strategies or technological deployment, there remains a lack of micro-level empirical analysis. Drawing upon panel data of Chinese A-share listed tourism firms from 2014 to 2023, this study constructs a firm-specific ST index using a novel text-mining approach that identifies the frequency of ST-related terms in corporate annual reports. Sustainable growth rate (SGR) serves as a metric for assessing long-term growth capability from a financial viewpoint, and is used to explore the linkage between ST and corporate growth performance. The empirical results show that ST is positively associated with SGR (β = .032, p < .01), and that the interaction terms ST × media attention (MA) and ST × financial slack (Slack) are also significantly positive (β = .012 and .023, respectively). These findings indicate that greater ST engagement leads to improved sustainable growth, particularly under conditions of high MA or abundant Slack. The analysis is based on a relatively small sample of A-share listed tourism firms, which constrains the generalisability of the results but allows for a focused examination of this sector. This paper deepens the micro-level perspective on ST, refines the understanding of contextual moderating effects, and offers theoretical and applied value for enterprises undergoing smart transformation in pursuit of sustainable advancement.
Zhang et al. (Thu,) studied this question.
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