LAUSR

Abstract Tourism is one of the most economically important industries worldwide, but is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters. Located in a remote and impoverished mountainous region, Sichuan’s Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture (Aba) has become highly tourism-dependent, being home to China’s highly visited Jiuzhaigou National Scenic Spot (Jiuzhaigou). Jiuzhaigou has experienced several recent turbulences following major earthquakes. To explore the implications of these types of events on resilient and sustainable tourism development, we examined the relationship between the tourism industry and the 2017 Jiuzhaigou Earthquake at multiple-scales (e.g., local, prefectural, and provincial) based on the tourism background trend line and (seasonal) autoregressive integrated moving average models. Following the 2017 Jiuzhaigou Earthquake, both Jiuzhaigou and Aba’s tourism industries were devastated, but Sichuan’s broader tourism industry experienced relatively little impact. Following the earthquake, subsequent visitation to Jiuzhaigou reduced by 56% (2017), 99% (2018) and 93% (2019), and Aba’s international (54%, 68%, and 48%) and domestic (30%, 49%, and 40%) tourist volumes decreased over the same timespan. The impacts of the earthquake also varied siginificantly by month at the local and prefectural levels. Moreover, earthquakes considerably altered Jiuzhaigou’s relative importance within Sichuan’s broader tourism industry, with Aba’s inbound tourism share decreasing from 35% (2004) to 8% (2008) and 2% (2017), following several major earthquakes. We highlight the importance of domestic tourism and economic diversity for achieving resilience and rejuvenating local economic activities following natural disasters.