The impact of agricultural tourism integration on farmers’ income growth: empirical evidence from China

Abstract

Agritourism is widely regarded as a practical approach to rural economic restructuring and income diversification in developing economies. This study evaluates the income effect of China’s National Demonstration Counties for Leisure Agriculture and Rural Tourism (LART) program and examines heterogeneity and potential transmission channels. Using a balanced panel of 1,532 Chinese county-level administrative units from 2000 to 2023, we employ a staggered difference-in-differences design. We further examine heterogeneity across geographical regions, city sizes, and high-speed-rail accessibility, and assess associations with capital-attraction and ecological-quality proxies. In the preferred specification, LART designation is associated with a 0.099-log-point increase in rural residents’ per capita disposable income (standard error = 0.024), equivalent to approximately 10.4%. The estimated association is larger in western China and small cities. LART designation is also positively associated with the selected capital and ecological proxies, although these regressions do not establish formal mediation. The findings suggest that agritourism-oriented place-based policies can support rural income growth, particularly in less-developed areas. The channel results should be interpreted as exploratory evidence, and the external validity of the estimates is bounded by China’s institutional and tourism-market context.