Cultural Offer and Distance in a Spatial Interaction Model for Tourism

Abstract

Culture is more and more considered as an important driver of tourism. However, it is critical, for policymakers, to evaluate the potential returns from investments in culture and generally cultural offer, in particular in multiregion settings with a potentially inefficient distribution of cultural offer. Our paper focuses on the role of distance (between the tourist's origin and destination regions) in mediating the tourism impact of cultural offer. This research question is investigated by means of a spatial interaction model, applied to the case of Italian domestic tourism. We find that distance indeed matters: a destination's endowment in culture appears to be more attractive for long-distance tourists, while an origin region's endowment seems to dinsincentivate long-distance trips to a greater extent.

Do economic crises lead tourists to closer destinations? Italy at the time of the Great Recession

“…Thus, it is not surprising that gravity models have been largely used to study tourism flows. Recent reviews on gravity models in tourism are in Khadaroo and Seetanah (), Patuelli et al (, ) and Morley et al (); the last one provides also a microeconomic background to gravity equations for tourism demand.…”

“…As for intra‐regional distance, we consider the squared root of the regional area divided by π . The matrix of geographic distances is borrowed by Patuelli et al (, ). Thus, the smallest distance is associated to intra‐regional tourism in Valle d'Aosta, while the longest distance pertains to the FriuliVG–Sicilia pair.…”

“…The use of this estimator is quite new in tourism economics, Patuelli et al (, ) are previous examples of its employment. However, they are not interested in the effect of distance and how it has changed over time, while this is our primary objective.…”

Unesco Sites as Public Goods: Comparative Experiences in Italy

“…Again, Patuelli et al (2013Patuelli et al ( , 2014 or Cafiso et al (2016) provide evidence about the effectiveness of UNESCO properties in acting as pull -or push -factor in shaping the inter-regional flows of domestic tourism in Italy. The emerging views, also in these cases, are not unanimous.…”

“…The emerging views, also in these cases, are not unanimous. Admittedly, the presence (and even the number) of UNESCO properties appear to be effective attraction factors (PATUELLI et al, 2013); however, the quantitative effects differ across the econometric specifications considered by different analyses; moreover, the consideration of territorial spill-over effects may lead to less clear pictures (PATUELLI et al, 2014;CAFISO et al, 2016).…”