Tourism competitiveness of Italian municipalities
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Tourism competitiveness of Italian municipalities Enrico Conti1 · Laura Grassini2 · Catia Monicolini3
© Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract The purpose of the paper is the study of tourism competitiveness and its determinants for the almost 8000 Italian municipalities. The partial least squares method is used on secondary data. Competitiveness is a latent factor measured by a number of reflective indicators, and influenced by some latent determinants derived within a formative scheme. The main findings show the importance of competitive advantages as key drivers of tourism competitiveness. Local specialized areas in tourism are identified through the destination competitiveness scores. The work contributes to the study of local competitiveness, also giving evidence on how it is possible to cover the complex feature of tourism competitiveness with secondary data. Moreover, as the municipality is generally the basic territorial unit for identifying specialized local areas, future research can apply these results in drawing a map of Italy with sounder areas for tourism analysis. Main limitations are concerned with the imputation of missing values, as data on tourist flows of smaller municipalities are not released for confidentiality issues. Moreover, the analysis at local level limits the use of some indicators, which are recognized as important determinants of competitiveness (prices of tourist services, transportation costs). Keywords Tourist destination · Partial least squares · Italy · Reflective indicators · Formative indicators · PLS-SEM
* Laura Grassini [email protected] Enrico Conti [email protected] Catia Monicolini [email protected] 1
IRPET (Istituto Regionale per la Programmazione Economica della Toscana), Via Pietro Dazzi, 1, 50141 Florence, Italy
2
Dipartimento di Statistica, Informatica, Applicazioni, Università di Firenze, Viale G.B. Morgagni, 59, 50134 Florence, Italy
3
Until August 2018: IRPET (Istituto Regionale per la Programmazione Economica della Toscana, Via Pietro Dazzi, 1, 50141 Florence, Italy
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1 Introduction The concept of tourism destination competitiveness (TDC) has generated a fluorishing body of literature from both academic and non-academic institutions. In this field of study, two main issues are related to the theoretical framework and operationalization process of the construct. In our opinion, the first point is well-discussed by Mazanec et al. (2007) who, referring to the interpretation proposed by Ritchie and Crouch (2003), stated that TDC includes hidden cause-effect assumptions. The second point relates to a major challenge in this research area: the actual operationalization of TDC should be mostly based on available (secondary) data in order to minimize the use of primary data, as this is expensive, expecially for a local destination. Furthermore, secondary data based on shared definitions can better guarantee comparable figures, by allowing benchmark operations among tourist destinations (TD). Followin
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