Tourism Management 32 (2011) 455e456

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Tourism Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tourman

Is UNESCO recognition effective in fostering tourism? A comment on Yang, Lin and Han: Reply
Chih-Hai Yang a, *, Hui-Lin Lin b
a b

Department of Economics, National Central University, 300 Jhongda Road, Jhongli 320, Taoyuan, Taiwan, ROC Department of Economics, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history: Received 22 February 2010 Accepted 22 March 2010 Keywords: Tourism World Heritage List Econometrics

a b s t r a c t
This note replies Cellinis comment on the real effect of WHL in inducing more tourist arrivals in Yang, Lin and Han (2010, Tourism Management). Due to the time-invariant feature of the WHL number in the short-run, the xed effect of panel data model seems to be inadequate on evaluating the impact of WHL on attracting international tourists. However, pooling estimates show that a region with more WHLs can attract more tourists. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In response to Yang, Lin, and Hans (2010) claim that the UNESCO World Heritage List (WHL) has a tourist-enhancing effect in China, especially in relation to cultural heritage sites, Cellini (2011) has quickly put forward comments that include three insightful observations. We feel that they are very valuable and deserve a further discussion. Cellinis observations are briey presented as follows. First, in Table 4 of Yang et al. (2010), the coefcients of WHL variables are signicantly positive in pooling OLS estimations (columns (1), (3), and (5)), while they are always not signicantly different from zero in the xed effects models (columns (2), (4), and (6)). As the pooling OLS estimators are probably biased in the presence of signicant individual effects, Cellini (2011) considers that the correct conclusion would be that being included on the WHL has no effect in terms of fostering tourism. Second, Arezki, Cherif, and Piotrowski (2009) adopt a wide cross-section of countries to examine how the number of WHL sites affects tourism specialization and how it contributes to economic growth. While the number of WHS spots has a signicantly positive inuence on tourism specialization in cross-sectional regressions, it appears to be weak in exploiting the within variation. Thus, the effect of the presence of spots on the WHL in terms of attracting tourists is not robust. Finally, Cellini (2011) provides an Italian case which shows that the presence of UNESCO WHL sites does not affect the growth rate of tourist overnights per resident in Italian regions during 1996e2007. Based

on the above observations, Cellini (2011) concludes that the real effect of the WHL on tourism attraction is far from being clear-cut and robust. Each of these observations is of value. We agree with Cellini that the main purpose of the UNESCO WHLs is to protect and preserve the worlds cultural and natural heritages with outstanding value to humanity rather than to promote tourist ows. However, being included among the sites on the WHLs may also have the added effect of promoting tourism and can be examined from both crosssectional and time-series dimensions. In terms of the crosssectional dimension, the question we would like to investigate econometrically is whether regions with more WHL sites attract more international tourists than regions with fewer WHL sites after controlling for a variety of variables. For example, given the same year, does Italy attract more foreign tourists than its European counterparts due to more UNESCO WHLs?1 On the other hand, the issue of the time dimension is useful in comparing the number of tourist arrivals before and after sites were included on the WHL within a region. The number of historical, natural and cultural sites is xed over time by nature, since they were established in the past. However, what has changed is the label given by the UNESCO and this recognition is treated as a panacea for promoting tourism in many countries, especially China (Ryan & Gu, 2009). Having been included on a WHL as a Historic Centre in 2005, Macau provides an excellent case to examine this issue, because Macau is a small region and has only one WHL site.

* Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: chyang@mgt.ncu.edu.tw (C.-H. Yang), huilin@ntu.edu.tw (H.-L. Lin). 0261-5177/$ e see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2010.03.011

Italy has 44 sites on the WHL and ranks top in the world.

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C.-H. Yang, H.-L. Lin / Tourism Management 32 (2011) 455e456

The main advantage of panel data is its ability to provide data for examining distinct questions from both cross-sectional and timeseries dimensions. Based on the pooling estimates of our study, it is evident that the number of WHL sites represents a powerful engine for tourism attraction. The cross-country analysis conducted by Arezki et al. (2009) also lends support to the importance of WHL in the cross-sectional dimension. These econometric evaluations seem to support the rooted belief that WHL sites can have a critical effect on tourism. From the point of view of econometric techniques, Naude and Saayman (2005) argue that by estimating the determinants of tourist arrivals using panel data with a short time span, the pooling estimation can serve as an appropriate technique, even if it does not take unobserved regional heterogeneity into account. In our opinion, our empirical estimates show the importance of the WHL in terms of attracting tourism, at least for China based on cross-sectional evidence. On the other hand, Cellini (2011) emphasizes that the positive coefcient of the WHL variable obtained by the xed effects model is statistically insignicant, implying that the WHL has no effect. Here we would like to point out that the xed effects model is estimated by removing the overall region means, (yit yi). Therefore, the results can be interpreted as the time dimensional effect of the WHL. We may examine this point case by case. In the case of Arezki et al. (2009), the within estimates are consistent with the nding that the WHL is insignicant. In the Italy case, Cellini (2011) also nds that the WHL is ineffective in inducing a higher growth of tourist arrivals as time passes. Since our xed effects model is neither signicant, we have drawn a conservative conclusion in our paper. Nevertheless, the evidence obtained may not be convincing. Technologically we would like to emphasize that the estimated coefcients for the WHL variables are not reliable and robust due to the time-invariant feature of the WHL variables in the short-run. As shown in Table 2 of Yang et al. (2011), the accumulated sites in China included on the WHL have changed only slightly, increasing

from 29 in 2000 to 30 in 2001e2002, to 33 in 2003, and to 35 in 2004e2005. The results imply that the number of WHL sites is almost time-invariant in many regions, preventing the xed effects model from obtaining a consistent estimator (Hsiao, 2004). Therefore, a more adequate technique to deal with this problem, such as a two-stage double xed effects model, is probably needed.2 Although the original purpose of listing the World Heritage sites was to protect and maintain these tangible and intangible assets belonging to humankind, they are often adopted in tourism propaganda by travel agents, newspapers, and even the ofcial tourism departments of many countries. Since the effectiveness of the WHL in terms of attracting tourists remains unclear so far, this question can specically be examined in terms of various different dimensions, such as numbers of observed units, and comparisons across regions and within regions, and so on. More empirical studies using appropriate and precise econometric techniques are needed. The evidence obtained from these studies will enable us to have a better understanding of this issue and will provide insightful implications for heritage policy. References
Arezki, R., Cherif, R., & Piotrowski, J. (2009). Tourism specialization and economic development: Evidence from the UNESCO World Heritage List. IMF Working Paper, 09/176. Bartel, A. P., & Sicherman, N. (1999). Technological change and wages: an interindustry analysis. Journal of Political Economy, 107(2), 285e325. Cellini, R. (2011). Is UNESCO recognition effective in fostering tourism? A comment on Yang, Lin and Han. Tourism Management, 32(2), 458e460. Hsiao, C. (2004). Analysis of panel data. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press. Naude, W. A., & Saayman, A. (2005). The determinants of tourist arrivals in Africa: a panel data regression analysis. Tourism Economics, 11(3), 365e391. Ryan, C., & Gu, H. (2009). Tourism in China: Destination, cultures and communities. London: Routledge. Yang, C. H., Lin, H. L., & Han, C. C. (2010). Analysis of international tourist arrivals in China: the role of World Heritage Sites. Tourism Management, 31(6), 827e837.

2 For the details of the two-stage double xed effects model, please refer to Bartel and Sicherman (1999).