Scholars have demonstrated that tourism development can influence residents’ quality of life (RQOL), directly or through mediation effects of satisfaction with life domains. Meanwhile, spatial spillover effects have been observed in both tourism and quality of life (QOL) areas. However, no studies have applied spatiotemporal analysis to study the relationship between tourism development and RQOL, accounting for the spatial dependence between regions and demonstrating mediation effects at an aggregate level. This study aims to bridge these gaps using spatiotemporal econometric modelling, identifying causal chains to investigate how and to what extent tourism development influences RQOL both intra-regionally and inter-regionally, while incorporating mediation effects into a unified framework.

The researcher constructs a hierarchical scale, including a holistic RQOL indicator, satisfaction with overall life, and satisfaction with four subordinate life domains. The individual-level QOL data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) are aggregated to the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics level 3 (NUTS3) and merged with tourism development data from the Great Britain Tourism Survey (GBTS) and control variables from the Annual Population Survey (APS) and the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This forms a panel dataset from 2010 to 2019, with the NUTS3 regions’ geographic information in England and Wales.

Applying a spatial lagged X dynamic panel data (SLX-DPD) specification using the robust system GMM technique, this study illustrates the direct and indirect pathways through which tourism development impacts RQOL. Results suggest that the impacts of tourism development on RQOL are fully mediated by three life domain pathways, with spatial spillover effects being stronger than the focal effects and statistically significant.

This is the first attempt at applying spatiotemporal econometric methodology to explore the pathways and mechanisms of tourism development’s impacts on RQOL in a holistic framework, providing important policy implications for regional tourism development and RQOL.