Gang Li elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences

Renowned tourism economist Professor Gang Li from the University of Surrey has been elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.   

Li, who is Professor of Tourism Economics at Surrey, joins the Academy’s Fellowship after considerable research impact that has helped governments and the tourism industry forecast travel demand, weigh the effects of tourism policies and plan for economic shocks. 

The Academy’s Fellowship consists of only 1,700 social scientists from academia, the public, private and third sectors. Fellows are elected through a process of independent peer review for the quality of their work and the work’s public benefit. 

For the past two decades, Professor Li’s research has focused on forecasting the trends and volatility of the tourism industry, which has faced a series of shocks – including pandemics, climate change and political volatility. Professor Li has developed methods drawing on systems thinking and spatial econometrics, used to analyse tourism demand, regional development, tourist behaviour and mobility, and applied them to questions of risk, destination resilience, migration, quality of life and the wider social and economic effects of tourism. 

Professor Li’s work has been used by organisations including the European Commission, the World Bank, the OECD, the Pacific Asia Travel Association, VisitBritain and VisitScotland. It has informed decisions on tourism taxation, accessibility policy, investment appraisal and destination marketing in a number of countries.