中国沙漠地区广泛分布于西北荒漠地带,其旅游产品远离东部客源中心城市,因而来访游客多依赖民航运输。基于2009—2019年沙漠地区旅游人数、旅游收入以及民航旅客运输的相关指标,借助空间邻近度、缓冲区分析和面板向量自回归模型（Panel vector autoregression,PVAR模型）对中国沙漠地区旅游业和民航客运的时空发展关系进行测度。结果表明：（1） 中国沙漠地区旅游资源主要沿丝绸之路经济带中心线分布,在中北及西北部地区较为密集。（2） 民航机场覆盖45个沙漠旅游景区,通达性较好的比例为86.7%,仅6个沙漠旅游景区通达性较差,两者间缓冲距离多数处于中距缓冲区,其中短距和中短距缓冲区所占比例为73.3%,说明两者的空间邻近度高,即沙漠地区旅游业和民航客运具有较强的空间相互依赖性。（3） 协整检验结果显示沙漠地区旅游业和民航客运存在长期稳定的均衡关系。通过脉冲响应和方差分解发现,短期内沙漠地区旅游业对民航客运表现为正负作用交互态势,长期将起到显著的正面促进作用;而民航客运可通过增加通航城市数量有效扩大客源市场,达到促进沙漠地区旅游业发展的目的。

With the wide distribution of deserts throughout northwest China, desert area tourism products are located at a distance from eastern tourist-intensive cities and visitors primarily rely on civil aviation transport to reach scenic desert spots. Based on indices of civil aviation transport, such as the number of tourists, income, passenger throughput, number of airlines, and navigation cities of desert areas from 2009 to 2019, this paper evaluated the space-time development relationship between desert tourism in China and civil aviation passenger transport using the spatial adjacency, analyses of the buffer zone, and the panel vector autoregression model. The three major conclusions are as follows. (1) Distributed along the centerline of the Silk Road Economic Belt, tourism resources in China’s desert areas are denser in the north-central and northwestern areas. (2) Of the 45 desert scenic spots covered by airports with civil aviation passenger transport, 86.7% have superior accessibility, while only 6 have inferior accessibility according to this study. This result shows that the development of desert tourism is strongly influenced by civil aviation passenger transport. Moreover, the buffer distances between most of the desert scenic spots and the civil aviation passenger transport airports are medium-range, with short distance and medium-short distance buffers accounting for 73.3% of the total, reflecting the high adjacency, namely, the high spatial dependency, between tourism in desert areas and civil aviation passenger transport. (3) The findings of the co-integration test show that there is a long-term and stable equilibrium between tourism in desert areas and civil aviation passenger transport. According to the impulse response and variance decomposition, it can be concluded that, in the short run, desert tourism has positive and negative interactivity with civil aviation passenger transport, while in the long run, desert tourism will promote the development of the latter. In return, civil aviation passenger transport will boost desert tourism by expanding the number of navigation cities and the market for passenger resources. For the future development of tourism and civil aviation passenger transport in desert areas, we can improve via the following three aspects: first, continuously improving the air transport capacity of desert areas; second, continuously promoting the development of tourism by seizing the strategic opportunity of the Silk Road Economic Belt, integrating existing desert tourism resources, and tapping deep into cultural connotations to instill content and soul in the product of desert tourism to build a well-known desert tourism brand in China and worldwide; and third, adhering to the integrative development strategy of “tourism plus transport”. By taking advantage of low altitude sightseeing by short distance civil aviation passenger transport and giving full play to the link-up of civil aviation transport, an integrative development brand and pattern of desert tourism and transport can be built.