Regional economic development and tourism: A literature review to highlight future directions for regional tourism research

Abstract

This article reviews the literature on regional economics and economic geography, in connection with tourism to identify theoretical models, attempting to explain the role of tourism in regional development and growth, and their empirical applications. The review finds that in their early days, theories of regional development did not include tourism, mainly because the regional economics and location research community did not consider tourism significant enough to influence economic development but also because regional science researchers tend to give priority to manufacturing above services, while development planners tend to prioritize urban above rural. This neglect of tourism as a research field in its own right has led the tourism sector to develop its own scholarly agenda suitable to their own business needs, such as destination competitiveness and tourism promotion. The literature review here concludes upon suggested future directions required to further develop regional tourism research as a study based on economic development and growth.

The relationship between tourism and economic growth in the EU-28. Is there a tendency towards convergence?

“…The impact of tourism on economic growth has been examined by numerous authors: Alfaro Navarro et al (2020); Antonakakis et al (2019); Calero and Turner (2020); Cheng and Zhang (2020); Estol and Font (2016); Ivanov and Webster (2013); Neuts (2020); Nunkoo et al (2020); Roudi et al (2019); Santamaria and Filis (2019); Sokhanvar (2019); Tang and Tan (2016); Tang (2020); Vergori and Arima (2020) and others. Tourism contributes significantly to economic growth all over the world (Figini & Vici, 2010), has a strong impact on the environment (Hall, 2011), facilitates, when practiced responsibly, sustainable development, and has a remarkable contribution to progress, since there is an overlap between economically developed countries and those with developed tourism sector (C ardenas-Garc ıa et al, 2015;Kum et al, 2015;UNCTAD., 2013;UNWTO., 2017).…”

Systematic Literature Review of Tourism Growth Nexus: An Overview of the Literature and a Content Analysis of 100 Most Influential Papers

“…[ no. 7 ]: The study by Calero and Turner (2019) reviews the theories of regional economics and economic geography with respect to the development of a research agenda in tourism economics. There is no qualitative or quantitative review of TLGH studies of any kind.…”

“…Hundreds of papers have looked into tourism-growth nexus and each paper has conducted literature reviews in one way or another. We have identified seven independent TLRs Madden and Shipley (2012), Pablo-Romero and Molina (2013), Brida et al (2013), Brida et al (2016), Gwenhure and Odhiambo (2017), Calero and Turner (2019), whereas three papers have done meta-regression analysis Castro-Nuño et al (2013), Nunkoo et al (2019), and Fonseca and Sánchez Rivero (2019). A short description of these literature review papers is given in Section 2.…”

“…(2013), Brida et al . (2016), Gwenhure and Odhiambo (2017), Calero and Turner (2019), whereas three papers have done meta‐regression analysis Castro‐Nuño et al . (2013), Nunkoo et al .…”

Exploring the Tourism-Poverty Alleviation Nexus in the Brics Groupof Nations

“…Given the palpable economic value of the global tourism industry, tourism has thus far been propagated as a catalyst for both the economic development and rapid global value-chain integration of most emerging and developing countries (Calero & Turner, 2020;Kim, Song & Pyun, 2016;Scheyvens, 2007). Moreso, the role of tourism as a vector of poverty alleviation/reduction has emerged as a critical debate within the tourism economics discourse Mahadevan & Suardi, 2019;Njoya, & Seetaram, 2018).…”