Visa Refusal Rate as an Institutional Accessibility Signal: Evidence from B-Class Visitor Visa Data from Mainland China

Abstract

This study investigates whether the visa refusal rate functions as a market-recognizable institutional accessibility signal that shapes pre-application expectations and subsequent visitor visa issuance performance, focusing on the B-class visitor visa market from Mainland China to the United States. Using publicly available U.S. Department of State annual nonimmigrant visa issuance data and B-class adjusted refusal rates for fiscal years 2013–2024, the study employs descriptive analysis, stage comparison, and simple lagged association analysis, aggregating B-1, B-1/B-2, and B-2 issuances and pairing the previous fiscal year’s refusal rate with the next year’s issuance growth rate while excluding pandemic-affected years. Four distinct stages are identified: rapid growth (2013–2015), sustained decline (2016–2019), collapse (2020–2021), and partial recovery (2022–2024), with 2024 issuances remaining at only 29.13% of the 2015 peak. Over the same period, the adjusted refusal rate rose from 8.50% to 25.37%. After excluding pandemic anomalies, the previous year’s refusal rate exhibits a directionally consistent negative association with the next year’s issuance growth rate (Pearson r=–0.6715; Spearman ρ=–0.7714), although statistical significance is limited by the small sample. The study argues that visa refusal rates can serve as observable institutional-accessibility signals that shape perceptions of destination competitiveness and visitor-flow recovery in long-haul outbound markets, extending visa regime scholarship by treating refusal rate as a market-relevant indicator rather than merely an approval outcome and offering a replicable, transparent secondary-data approach for tourism management research.