Is information asymmetry alleviation always beneficial for tourism: The institutional paradox from social credit construction

Controversies persist regarding the economic evidence on whether information asymmetry alleviation at the macro-institutional level impacts tourism. This note constructs a theoretical derivation from the dual perspectives of tourism economic scale and industrial status and ingeniously leverage China’s Social Credit Construction (SCC) as a quasi-natural experiment for empirical investigation. Findings reveal that SCC-driven alleviation of information asymmetry inhibits short-term tourism revenue and narrows the proportion of tourism in the national economy. This note highlights dynamic evaluation of information asymmetry’s macro-tourism impacts and advances dialogue between institutional economics and tourism economics.