Can sustainability drive tourism development in small rural areas? Evidences from the Adriatic

Abstract

This study explores how sustainability can constitute a driver of tourist demand in small areas, at the early stage of tourism development. Feasible methods and scales are proposed to analyze the perceived value of rural tourism and visitor perceived sustainability, where the low tourist demand and the touch-and-go nature of the typical visit imply measurement and modeling problems. The advantages of ordinal SEM in our empirical setting are compared to the standard model. Results indicate that a good state of conservation of the cultural heritage is the most important indicator of perceived sustainability, followed by a well-protected natural environment. We disentangle the relationship between tourism and sustainability, showing that the latter is perceived as a limitation directly, but it turns out to be a driver of destinations’ competitiveness thanks to its strong influence on the perceived value, that moderates its contribution to destination image, satisfaction and intention to recommend.

Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2021.1931256 .

Keywords:

• Perceived sustainability
• sustainable tourism development
• rural tourism
• ordinal SEM
• small areas
• perceived value

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund under Grant Rep.10 Prot.n.52. We thank EXCOVER Project Partners, destination managers and policy-makers for the collaboration. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for the useful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial competing interests to report.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund under Grant Rep.10 Prot.n.52.

Notes on contributors

Andrea Guizzardi

Andrea Guizzardi is associate professor of Economic Statistics with joint appointments in the Department of Statistical Sciences “Paolo Fortunati” and in the Center for Advanced Studies in Tourism of the University of Bologna, Italy. . His research interests are related to destination management and tourists’ satisfaction but he has also published extensively on tourism demand forecasting and hotels’ pricing strategies. He holds a master degree and a Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Bologna. For more details, one may visit the website: https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/andrea.guizzardi/en.

Annalisa Stacchini

Annalisa Stacchini is adjunct professor of Statistics in the Department of Economics at the University of Bologna, Italy. She also collaborates with the Center for Advanced Studies in Tourism of the University of Bologna. Her main research interests regard tourism statistics, analysis of categorical data and destination management. She holds a master of art in Philosophical Sciences, a master degree in Business Economics and a Ph.D. in Statistical Sciences.

Michele Costa

Michele Costa is a professor of Statistics in the Department of Economics at the University of Bologna, Italy. He has been a faculty member for around thirty years and has taught introductory and advanced courses in pure and applied statistics at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. His research interests are in the fields of measurement of inequality, analysis of poverty and latent variables. He has (co)-authored over 90 research papers in a wide range of areas in Statistics and Applied Statistics. He received a master’s degree in Statistics and Economics with honours from the University of Bologna, Italy, in 1988. For more details, one may visit the website: https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/michele.costa/en.