Evidence from spatial interaction models

As tourism is becoming one of the most important sources of economic growth at the local level, it is crucial to identify and assess the relevant determinants of tourism flows. This paper investigates this issue by carrying out an econometric analysis of tourism flows for the 107 Italian provinces based on the origin-destination (OD) spatial interaction models, which fully account for the spatial dependence generally featured by tourism flows. Besides geographical distance, the set of explanatory variables includes both pull and push locations’ characteristics to assess their relative role in determining the distinctive traits of emissiveness and attractiveness for all the provinces. We thus consider income, density, accessibility, natural, cultural and recreational attractions. The main results point out that there is a great deal of spatial dependence induced by neighbouring provinces at both origin and destination, which has been commonly overlooked by previous contributions relying on the gravity specification. Once we account for such a complex kind of dependence, we find sizeable impacts of neighbouring territories characteristics that enhance the effectiveness of internal provinces’ tourism determinants. Most of the explanatory variables exhibit the expected effect, with distance and population density showing a negative impact on tourists’ decisions when choosing a specific destination, while income, accessibility and attractions turning out to be crucial determinants of tourism flows.