Assessing the tourism attractiveness of World Heritage Sites: the case of Spain

No consensus has been reached on the effectiveness of World Heritage Sites (WHSs) in attracting tourism. This paper analyzes the impact of WHSs on tourist demand in Spain at a disaggregated level for all Spanish provinces (NUTS-3 regions), based on original panel data for 50 Spanish provinces for th...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Castillo Manzano, José I., Castro Nuño, Mercedes, López Valpuesta, Lourdes, Zarzoso, Álvaro
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repositorio:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/136214
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/11441/136214
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.culher.2020.12.005
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Cultural tourism
World Heritage Sites
Tourism demand
Panel data
Spain
NUTS-3 regions
Descripción
Sumario:No consensus has been reached on the effectiveness of World Heritage Sites (WHSs) in attracting tourism. This paper analyzes the impact of WHSs on tourist demand in Spain at a disaggregated level for all Spanish provinces (NUTS-3 regions), based on original panel data for 50 Spanish provinces for the 2000–2019 period. The results show a positive impact of WHSs on domestic and foreign tourism demand when considering all the provinces together and that the first WHSs (designated in the 1980s) have a greater tourism-enhancing effect (“first generation effect”). However, there are differences between Spanish inland and coastal provinces: only cultural WHSs have an impact on tourism in inland provinces, whereas, in coastal provinces, only natural WHSs have the power of tourism attraction.