中文摘要：

旅游业会通过溢出效应对经济增长产生非线性影响,但尚缺乏相关经验证据。文章基于1999-2013年省级面板数据,以旅游业发展水平作为转换变量,采用面板平滑转换回归模型（PSTR）,对旅游业与经济增长之间的非线性关系进行了实证检验。结果表明：旅游业对经济增长具有正向促进效应,旅游导向型经济增长假说在中国真实有效;旅游业与经济增长之间的关系存在非线性的旅游业门槛效应,旅游业发展水平与旅游业经济影响效应显著负相关。随着旅游业发展水平的提高,旅游业经济影响效应处于高机制,当旅游业发展跨越门槛值之后,旅游业经济影响效应处于低机制,旅游业发展会弱化其对经济增长正向影响的边际效应。因此,可通过优化旅游产业结构和强化经济增长其他决定因素对旅游业的外部性效应,来保持旅游业对经济增长的稳定持续贡献。

英文摘要：

Tourism has become a strategic tool by which to promote economic growth for destinations, due to its importance in creating foreign exchange, offering job opportunities, increasing tax revenue, and balancing payments. The tourism-led growth （TLG） hypothesis has been previously validated by scholars; however, the existing papers focus on the linear relation between tourism and economic growth, which clearly does not conform to the law of tourism economy. In fact, a nonlinear relationship exists between tourism and economic growth through the spillover effect, although there is still no empirical evidence for this. Therefore, this paper applies the panel smooth transition regression （PSTR） model to examine the nonlinear relationship between tourism and economic growth, using tourism as a transition variable for 30 provinces in China during the period of 1999 to 2013. We also check the robustness by using panel threshold regression （PTR）. The empirical results indicate that tourism has a significant positive effect on economic growth, thus the tourism-led growth hypothesis is valid in China. In addition, the relationship between tourism and economic growth is nonlinear, and varies inversely with tourism industry specialization. With the development of tourism, the effect of tourism on economic growth is in the high regime; however, the relationship between tourism and economic growth shows a decreasing marginal tendency as the degree of specialization grows, when above the threshold level. This paper enriches the field of research regarding tourism economics, especially the TLG hypothesis. Based on China＇ s provincial panel data, this paper explores the inherent mechanism of the effects of tourism on economic growth, then provides empirical evidence for determining whether or not TLG is valid in China. The conclusions of this paper lay the theoretical foundation for the effects of regional tourism development on economic growth. First, the TLG hypothesis is proven to be valid in China, which signifies