觀光產業是世界各國所重視的無煙囪工業，台灣擁有豐富且多樣化的人文及自然資源，近年來政府亦積極推動多項觀光政策，以期使台灣成為觀光大國。 宜蘭縣本就著重於當地的觀光發展，而雪山隧道於95年6月開通，使得前往宜蘭的距離更加縮短，交通更為便捷。本研究使用鮮少用於觀光相關議題的計量方法－差異間之差異法（Difference-in-Difference, 以下簡稱DID）來探究雪隧開通是否能對宜蘭觀光人數造成影響。 本研究以宜蘭縣的遊客人次為實驗組，花蓮縣的遊客人次作為對照組，比較在雪隧前後觀光人數的變化。希望能以實證結果觀察雪隧帶來的便利交通，是否能使宜蘭縣之觀光人數增長，藉以窺見重大交通建設對偏遠地區觀光人數的影響。 實證結果發現在雪隧開通初期有使宜蘭觀光人數明顯的增加，雪隧開通確實讓遊客到宜蘭的旅行時間縮短，增加旅遊方便性，但雪隧的開通是否能恆長性的替宜蘭縣帶來觀光人潮便無法預期。 ;Tourism industry is an important industry. Taiwan has a rich and diverse humanities and natural resources. In recent years, the Government has actively promoted many tourism policies, in order to make Taiwan a popular country for tourists. Yilan County has already focused on local tourism development, and Hsuehshan Tunnel opened in June 2006, which significantly shortened the distance from Taipei to Yilan. It′s more convenient to travel from Taipei to Yilan. This study adopts the "Difference-in-Differential "approach to evaluate the effectiveness of the opening of the Tunnel. In this study, we treat Yilan′s visitors as the experimental group, Hualien′s visitors as the control group. Compare the number of visitors’ change before and after the Hsuehshan Tunnel opening. We conduct an empirical study to examine whether the easy traffic resulted from the opening of Hsuehshan Tunnel could bring more visitors. Our empirical results show the opening of Hsuehshan Tunnel in 2006 led to more visitors to Yilan.
