Tourism and regional development: a spatial econometric model for Portugal at municipal level
- PDF / 690,940 Bytes
- 15 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 94 Downloads / 167 Views
Tourism and regional development: a spatial econometric model for Portugal at municipal level Luis Delfim Santos 1
& Ana
Catarina Vieira 2
Received: 23 November 2018 / Accepted: 25 May 2020/ # ISEG – Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão 2020
Abstract This study examines the importance of tourism as a factor for regional economic development in Mainland Portugal, emphasizing the inter-regional spatial spillover effects. A spatial analysis of the main variables of the tourism sector revealed strong evidence of positive spatial autocorrelation across the municipalities of Portugal. A significant spatial clustering of these activities on coastal locations was identified, leading to the formation of hot spots in coastal regions and cold spots in inland regions. Furthermore, this work specifies spatial econometric models aiming to estimate the relevance of the tourism sector in regional economic development, on a municipal level. The econometric model, which highlights the role performed by interregional spatial spillovers, regresses the regional gross value added against a group of variables, which reflect the contribution of the tourism sector and, furthermore, control variables for the classic determinants of income, for the 278 municipalities of Portugal. The results show that tourism is a significant driver of regional economic development. Moreover, they revealed the presence of positive and significant inter-regional spillover effects, which strongly enhance tourism’s economic impact. Keywords Tourism sector . Spillover effects . Spatial econometrics . Portugal JEL C21 . R12 . Z32
1 Introduction The role of tourism in the process of economic development at a regional level has been extensively emphasised in economics literature. Indeed, the study of regional development
* Luis Delfim Santos [email protected]
1
CEF.UP and Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal
2
Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal
L. D. Santos, A. C. Vieira
in many cases cites tourism as offering great potential in boosting this development, which is why many economies focus strongly on this sector aiming to stimulate economic growth. The relationship between tourism and economic development and, in particular the tourism-led growth hypothesis (see, for instance, Brida et al. 2016), has been analysed and tested using a wide variety of methods. This analysis has essentially been performed at a national level; nevertheless, even when conducted at a regional level, the spatial issues are very often ignored. The tourism sector is heavily dependent on spatial and local factors and not merely on resource endowments (Capone and Boix 2008). Effectively, these factors tend to play a crucial role in determining the impact of tourism on a given region, as the spatial structure of the tourism sector is closely related to the nature and extent of the impact that it may generate. The presence of spatial patterns in the distribution of tourism activities has been observed in various countries where ne
Data Loading...
