Territorial Analysis of the Survival of European Aid to Rural Tourism (Leader Method in SW Spain)

Abstract

Due to the problems of the European rural environment, the European Union introduced territorial development strategies called the Leader Method (LEADER Initiatives and the now extinct PRODER Operational Programs implemented only in Spanish territory). The objective was to activate the economic development of these areas, to maintain the population and to slow down the migration and aging processes. During the last 25 years, these initiatives have been implemented in European rural areas, and more particularly in Extremadura, establishing new activities such as rural tourism, which has become the economic backbone of many families, complementing agricultural incomes. The development of rural tourism has led to the implementation of accommodation and catering services throughout Extremadura, adapting to the new tourist demands. However, after 25 years, its sustainability has been very different, with contextual variables that have conditioned its success. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the economic sustainability of the tourism offer financed by Leader and the extinct Proder in order to identify the factors that have determined its success in a territory with very diverse characteristics. For this purpose, a methodology based on two statistical analysis techniques (principal component analysis and cluster analysis) has been designed to establish behavioral patterns through the different context variables used. The results obtained have shown that factors such as investment, location, the presence of protected resources and accessibility are determining factors for the survival of the tourism offer.

The Effects of Tourism on Local Development in Protected Nature Areas: The Case of Three Nature Parks of Sierra Morena (Andalusia, Spain)

“…According to the interviewees, the declaration of the NtPs generated a favourable context for tourism development, as has been highlighted for the Spanish NtPs [27,29,39]. However, they emphasise that it was the institutional framework established by the CAP and the implementation of the LAGs (SNS in 1991; SAPA in 1995; SH in 1995 and 1997) that represented a turning point for the implementation of leisure and tourism as new activities [29,46,47]. Nonetheless, a particular initial oversizing (SNS) generated a decline in supply before 2000.…”

“…At the same time, some municipal stakeholders speak of difficulties (population size, income and investment) for entrepreneurship and the presence of non-entrepreneurial activities [135] (Int20, Int29). Out of the 1,007 tourist activities registered in 2021, including accommodation and receptive companies/tourist activities (Figures 6 and 7), only 421 are business activities [79], which is an expression of scarce entrepreneurship [39,136], fragmentation and individualism [19,35,39,47,77], frequently due to contextual limitations, such as ageing or financing [46,68].…”

“…Thus, municipalities appear as facilitators of tourist activity [77], while micro-operations depend on scarce public European, state, and regional resources [28,39,136]. The available public funding is concentrated on opening tourist establishments without planning [21], location and accessibility [46] and without evaluating their use [137] due to the belief that the resources generated by themselves tourist flows, forgetting that not all spaces have the same tourist potential [40], so there has been the uneven success of the initiatives [46].…”

“…Consequently, it generates endogenous development [4] and community empowerment [45], which is especially important in PNA [27]. The EC introduced a participatory and local "bottom-up approach" [43] in search of solutions to rural issues by endowing the CAP with the LEADER initiative (1991) implemented by Local Action Groups (LAGs) to generate political, administrative and inter-territorial contexts for governance [43,46]. However, LAGs, in many cases, have been indicative superstructures intended to finance projects rather than provide overviews [47].…”

Effects of local policies and public goods on tourism in rural areas: Exploring spatial dependence patterns

“…These factors may, at least to some extent, substitute for naturally existing public goods. The paradox, however, is that rural areas with better infrastructure receive more aid (Cárdenas Alonso & Nieto Masot, 2022;Engelmo Moriche et al, 2021). This creates a kind of endogenous relation in which the tourist base is dependent on policy funds, but the stream of funds can also be impacted by the level of tourism development.…”