RICERCA ITALIANA     

Local sustainable development and tourism

Università degli Studi di Siena

Abstract

The research project joins together 4 research groups who are interested in tackling the issues of local sustainable development in relation to tourist flows. The 4 groups are based in as many focal spots of the Mediterranean tourism development (which moreover are largely complementary from the point of view of tourism typology). These are therefore natural laboratories for a theoretical and applied integrated approach to promote sustainability by rethinking governance of the development processes.
Four related research axes will be developed: i) construction of evaluation methods for tourist carrying capacity (TCC), both with the physical and the socio-economic approaches, but with a new integrated viewpoint that looks at the welfare levels of tourists but also of resident communities; ii) with this topic is strictly linked the discussion on so called aimed fiscality, which is being seen in many places as the tool to tackle one of the aspects of tourism sustainability, the local provision of extraordinary services, in excess of those aimed at the resident community. Clearly, the two themes above in their turn are connected with the general issue of the preservation and valorisation of those cultural and environmental assets that generate the tourist flows , and this requires iii) an adequate value assessment system, and iv) forecasting models, broadly defined, which have to allow for the study of the different scenarios of development as due to the impact of >>>

Principal Investigator

Lionello Franco PUNZO Università degli Studi di SIENA

Research Objectives

The main objective of the proposed research project is to produce a framework where a variety of issues of tourism development are organically merged with the themes of local development as a community-based and community-driven scheme of endogenous growth (this implies that instances of so-called artificial tourist attractions will not be considered). There is no such a unified view of the two sets of issues connecting them with one another, notwithstanding the fact that tourism does play a major role in many places as part of the engine of local growth.
Thus, we plan to marry these two, so far largely independent, thematic issues with the notion of sustainability as a means for future growth. Sustainability will be taken to mean a multidimensional property: environmental compatibility, social acceptability (recalling the principles of Local Agenda 21 Programme), and finally long run economic profitability based upon correct and socially agreed systems of evaluations of scarce and non reproducible resources like those that are involved in the fruition of tourist communities. This adheres to the program of articulating a new structural and welfare approach to tourism and local development.
The project intends, also, to test various analytical schemes and their policy implications for the governance of such development process, through among other things also experimental and empirical. In this light, we plan to produce a comparative assessment of theories >>>

First Results

The main results of this organising phase will be the publication of papers, some jointly written by members of the research group, with the nature of surveys of the themes and specialized areas already identified. These papers might be published on the working paper series of the Osservatorio per il Turismo Sostenibile at the same time as on CRENOS series, and electronically on their web sites. These materials will provide the basis upon which to built the ensuing phases, in addition to potentially representing valuable tools for university education and at other levels. Due to the interdisciplinary and intersectoral dimensions of the theme, the possibility is also anticipated that of adding contributions by external researchers whom will be called in at various stages.These are basically the implementation of the interviewing campaigns and processing of questionnaires. As for this part the project basically is modelled after the principles of Local Agenda 21, it will very important partecipate to working groups and brainstorming evetns implemented by some communities with which relationships have already been established. At the same time some members of the Cagliari and Rimini teams will proceed with their construction and testing of the envisaged empirical and econometric models.These are basically the implementation of database, network to develop future studies, methodologies to be easily exported. Data and methodologies will be made available to the scientific >>>

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

The issue
Due to its methodological and thematic starting point, the program belongs naturally to the research stream on local sustainable development, and more specifically to the debated already quite articulated on local development as fuelled by tourism development- the existing modeling strategies of clear macroeconomic and input output derivation, looks at tourism as basically a component of autonomous demand which accordingly can activate a multiplier process on income and employment, but it does overlooks the socioeconomic implications and the welfare aspects that lie beyond impact on current income and employment. The process of tourism driven development has also been analysis by importing the theory of the life cycle, boldly applied after minor adaptations to the so called tourist product (Burtler 1980, Candela, 1996, Del Bono e Fiorentini, 1987). At any rate, the great and systematic absentee from all current treatments of tourism appears to be the local community of the historic residents: i.e. those who can claim to be the natural stakeholders in the resource patrimony which almost inevitably is the source of the destination attractiveness. Conjugating local development and tourist development drives the attention back to the fact that tourism implies the encounter of two communities.
To the non attention or casual attention for such a key aspect of tourism compared with other sustainability issues corresponds the reality of most or large forms of >>>