COVID-19 impacts of tourism on Chinese economy

To comprehensively assess the economic impacts from China’s tourism industry caused by COVID-19 in 2020, this article develops a new multiplier calculation and decomposition method based on the social accounting matrix (SAM). This method is suitable for situations in which multiple industries are simultaneously exposed to external shocks, especially comprehensive industries like tourism. By categorizing all industries as being in either the tourism sector or the nontourism sector, we calculate the output, value-added and employment impacts of COVID-19, then decompose them into four levels: direct, indirect, spillover and reverberation effects. There are some subindustries of both the tourism and nontourism sectors that were severely affected. Compared with the calculation results from the traditional SAM method, the method developed in this paper identifies quite different industrial structures, although there is almost no difference in the total impacts