TECHNOLOGY-INSTITUTION SYNERGY DRIVEN PATHWAYS FOR FINTECH TO RESOLVE THE “FINANCING-EFFICIENCY PARADOX” OF CHENGDU-CHONGQING CULTURAL AND TOURISM INDUSTRY

Abstract

The Chengdu-Chongqing Twin-City Economic Circle, as a core growth pole of China’s western cultural and tourism (cultural-tourism) industry, faces a prominent “financing-efficiency paradox” characterized by sufficient capital supply, inefficient resource allocation, low industrial capital turnover, and unbalanced industrial value realization. Traditional financial support models rely on single capital injection and lack multi-dimensional empowerment of industrial operation, resulting in persistent structural contradictions between financing scale and industrial development efficiency in the cultural-tourism industry. Based on the newly proposed Technology-Institution Synergy Evolution Theory, this study constructs a multi-dimensional analytical framework of “technological empowerment + institutional guarantee + industrial optimization” to systematically explain the internal formation mechanism of the cultural-tourism industry’s financing-efficiency paradox and the marginal improvement logic of fintech intervention. Adopting the latest panel data of 16 prefecture-level cities in the Chengdu-Chongqing region from 2020 to 2025, this study uses standardized statistical charts and comparative analysis methods to verify the practical effect of fintech on breaking the industrial paradox. The research finds that the single application of financial technology has a limited mitigation effect on the financing-efficiency paradox, while the coordinated matching of digital financial technology innovation and regional institutional innovation can significantly optimize the cultural-tourism industry’s capital allocation efficiency, shorten the industrial value chain realization cycle, and resolve the structural mismatch between financial supply and industrial demand. Further heterogeneity analysis shows that technology-institution synergy presents differentiated driving effects on traditional sightseeing tourism, cultural creative tourism, and integrated leisure tourism in the Chengdu-Chongqing region. This study innovatively expands the theoretical boundary of fintech industrial empowerment, fills the research gap of regional cultural-tourism industry paradox governance, and provides practical path references and policy enlightenment for the high-quality development of cultural-tourism industries in urban agglomerations under the integration of technology, finance and institution.