Impacts of Tourism Demand on Retail Property Prices in a Shopping Destination

Abstract

Understanding the relationship between tourism demand and retail property prices is of great significance to tourist destinations, especially shopping destinations. The increase in tourism demand may alter the implicit prices of certain retail property characteristics (e.g., age and accessibility to transit). This study examines how tourism demand (measured by tourist volume) affects retail property prices in the tourist precinct of a shopping destination, namely Hong Kong. The implementation of the policy Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) in 2003 in Hong Kong has substantially increased tourist shoppers from Mainland China, and it is used as a quasi-natural experiment of the increased tourist volume. Spatial and non-spatial hedonic pricing models are developed based on the ground-floor retail property transaction data of Causeway Bay, Hong Kong before and after the IVS (1993–2011). The findings of this study are as follows. (1) Accessibility to transit has a larger positive price effect after the implementation of the IVS. (2) The implicit price of accessibility to accommodation facilities is not significantly altered by the implementation of the IVS. (3) Age has a larger negative price effect after the implementation of the IVS. The first two outcomes are related to the economic concerns of tourist shoppers, while the last can be explained by their hometown experience. Finally, practical implications are discussed.