Investigating the consequences of tourism market diversification for creative product diversification

Tourism and the creative industries are highly interconnected, functioning as both upstream and downstream sectors for one another. In this study, we examined the impact of the tourism market diversification strategy on the diversification of creative products. Using a cross-country dataset covering 91 countries from 1996 to 2020, we found that diversification in tourists’ countries of origin significantly accelerates creative product diversification. This result is robust across various measures of product diversification. Furthermore, we observed that such diversification strategies are more effective in fostering the creation of new creative products than in expanding the scale of existing products.