Digital Governance, Data Elements, and Smart Tourism

This study examines how digital governance promotes smart tourism using panel data for Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2011 to 2024. The results show that digital governance significantly advances smart tourism. Data elements strengthen this effect, while tourism service scenario upgrading and digital innovation ecosystem empowerment constitute two transmission channels. The effect is stronger in central and western cities and in cities with a more developed tourism foundation. These findings extend research on digital governance by identifying data elements as an enabling condition for urban tourism transformation and offer policy implications for data-driven tourism development.