Executive leadership, policy tourism, and policy diffusion among local governments

• Published date: 01 November 2022
• Author: Hongtao Yi,Ivy Liu
• Date: 01 November 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13529

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Executive leadership, policy tourism, and policy diffusion

among local governments

Hongtao Yi | Ivy Liu

John Glenn College of Public Affairs at The Ohio

State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA

Correspondence

Ivy Liu, John Glenn College of Public Affairs at

The Ohio State University, 234A Page Hall, 1810

College Rd. Columbus, OH 43210, USA.

Email: liu.8110@osu.edu

Abstract

Policy tourism is an important but rarely studied phenomenon describing a wide-

spread practice, through which local public and business leaders form delegations,

choose target cities, and implement intercity policy diffusion, business exchange,

and economic collaboration. Our research examines how executive leadership

characteristics, city-level contextual factors, and interdependence mechanisms

relate to cities’decisions to visit. Using two-stage probit selection models with

instrumental variables on a dyadic balanced panel dataset recording all policy

tourism events between major U.S. cities from 2007 to 2016, we answer this ques-

tion accounting for potential endogeneity problems. Our findings suggest that cit-

ies with experienced yet newly appointed, minority leaders tend to visit cities with

experienced white or female leaders. Additionally, policy tourism happens among

cities embedded in highly complex, munificent, and turbulent environments.

Finally, cities tend to learn from peers with higher economic prosperity or interact

with their competitors.

Evidence for Practice

•Local public and business leaders form delegations, which facilitate intercity pol-

icy diffusion.

•Cities tend to visit competitors that are similar to them in demographic, political,

and socio-economic characteristics, but with a better economic trajectory.

•Intercity visits happen among cities experiencing high environmental complex-

ity, munificence, and turbulence.

INTRODUCTION

Policy tourism, sometimes called “intercity visit,”“leadership

exchange,”or “study mission/tour,”is a scheduled trip

taken by a multi-sector delegation of one city’s leaders to

another city to engage in dialogue with their counter-

parts, learn lessons and best practices on timely issues

and program areas, and facilitate intercity diffusion and

policy exchange in economic development and commu-

nity building (Cook & Ward, 2011). Policy tourism has

drawn increasing attention from public administration

scholars and practitioners for its layered implications. At

the macro level, policy tourism facilitates the spread and

adaptation of innovative ideas, programs, and initiatives

across communities. Because the selection of the destina-

tion city for policy tourism is typically issue-driven, it pro-

vides opportunities for local leaders to focus on best

practices in important policy and administrative issues.

Policy tourism delegations observe the challenges and

successes of their counterparts in the destination city

around the policy and administrative practices, looking

for novel applications to situations faced in their own

community (Wood, 2014). At the meso and micro levels,

policy tourism strengthens relationship building through

intercity, inter-organizational, and interpersonal net-

working, improving performance at organizational and

individual levels (Ma, 2017). Through shared experience

and understanding, delegates return home as a more

Received: 8 January 2021 Revised: 24 May 2022 Accepted: 27 May 2022

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13529

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium,

provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

© 2022 The Authors. Public Administration Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Public Administration.

1024 Public Admin Rev. 2022;82:1024–1041.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar

cohesive team with stronger motivations for cooperation

and coordination, enhancing the capacity for collabora-

tive governance in the visitor community. The practical

significance of policy tourism makes it a unique phenom-

enon deserving theoretical and empirical investigations.

Unquestionably, we find much to acclaim in extant

work on policy tourism. Studies in public policy mostly

focus on the characteristics of policy tourism (Cook

et al., 2014; Gonz

alez, 2011), its advantages (Wood, 2014),

and disadvantages (Cook et al., 2014; Hudson &

Kim, 2014). Scholars in public management describe a

similar externally and horizontally oriented networking

effort as “managerial networking,”or specifically “manag-

ing outward,”and examine its impact on performance in

the public, nonprofit, and private sectors (Johansen &

LeRoux, 2013; Li & Zhang, 2007; Rho & Han, 2021). Despite

these efforts, policy tourism has rarely been conceptual-

ized as a manifestation of policy diffusion, through which

policy practices and ideas get communicated across cities

(Hudson & Kim, 2014;Ma,2017). For instance, the adop-

tion of anti-smoking policies by early-adopter states

changes the policy implications in late-adopter states

(Gilardi et al., 2021). The trip to Nashville and Austin

spurred the development of career academies in

Jacksonville.

Further, studies on policy tourism in policy research

are mostly descriptive, while most studies on managerial

networking in public management mainly emphasize the

managerial networking-performance relationship. Few

have examined factors triggering the occurrence of policy

tourism. Additionally, these studies are all based upon a

monochromatic research design, which examines policy

tourism and managerial networking as independent and

isolated phenomena, overlooking the interactions

between pairs of cities and how they impact the decisions

to partake in policy tourism.

Here we situate this study within the literature on pol-

icy diffusion. While most studies have centered on policy

adoptions and discussed whether prior policy adoptions

determine the likelihood of later adoptions, we zoom in

to the early stage of policy making prior to policy adop-

tions and argue that policy diffusion starts with knowl-

edge exchange for problem identification and definition

(Gilardi et al., 2021). Policy tourism, accordingly, serves as

a pivotal vehicle for diffusion in terms of innovation trans-

mission. Given that a prominent feature of policy tourism

is the interdependence and interconnectedness between

dyads of cities, as they need to decide collectively upon

the match between the cities, the discussion topics, the

logistics of the visits, and the best timing of visits, what is

worthy of a closer examination is what factors and spe-

cific mechanisms shape the patterns of policy tourism

between dyads of cities, that is, if City B decides to visit

City A for innovative ideas, while City A accepts such a

visit, what explains City A and City B’s joint actions? Spe-

cifically, we focus on local governments’motivations

regarding which cities are more likely to visit others,

which cities are more likely to be chosen as visit targets,

and what help match them in a tourism event.

To answer these questions, we look at the system of

hundreds of policy tourism visits rather than one or two

policy tourism events. Under this framework, we formu-

late a set of hypotheses and argue that the impetus for

policy tourism can come from within the city. It happens

when executive leaders with different personal character-

istics (e.g., gender, race, tenure, and experience) promote

policy tourism for reelection or reappointment, or when

city-level contingency factors, typified by disparate facets

of institutional and task environments, impel city-to-city

policy tourism for innovation, or as responses to emerg-

ing environmental trends. Additionally, the stimulus for

policy tourism can come from outside the city, with the

pressure of innovation flowing through learning, imita-

tion, and competition mechanisms of policy diffusion. To

test our hypotheses, we present a novel research design

by collecting and analyzing a national dataset on policy

tourism from 2007 to 2016 across 310 cities in the U.S.,

with which we estimate two-stage probit selection

models with instrumental variables.

This article pushes forward the cumulative knowledge

of policy tourism and policy diffusion in public manage-

ment and policy process literature in several ways. First,

framing policy tourism as a key part of policy diffusion

and as a national, inter-linked system, highlights the role

of policy tourism as an important channel shaping the

macro system-level patterns of intercity policy diffusion.

Second, the drivers of policy tourism are examined in an

interactive, dyadic setting, allowing us to uncover how

the interactions between pairs of relationships shape the

decision to participate in policy tourism. A third potential

contribution comes from a two-stage instrumental vari-

able research design, which helps address potential endo-

geneity problems. Last, different from most previous

studies, which use qualitative and ethnographic methods,

or are limited to cross-sectional snapshot investigations,

this article provides a longitudinal analysis of the dynamic

changes in policy tourism in the U.S.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Policy tourism

Policy tourism, characterized by intercity visits, intercity

leadership exchange, study tours, site visits, and other

fact-finding trips (Wood, 2014), is a pivotal instrument for

promulgating best practices throughout jurisdictions and

a basic tool for active and purposeful information dissem-

ination (Cook et al., 2014; Cook & Ward, 2011;

Gonz

alez, 2011; McCann, 2011). The research on policy

tourism is initiated in urban studies by Ward (2011) and

Gonz

alez (2011). Most of the studies are descriptive, dis-

cussing the characteristics, advantages, and disadvan-

tages of policy tourism.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW 1025