Analysis of the effectiveness in the disbursement of the European Regional Development Fund for selected entities in the tourism economy

Abstract

The aim of the article is to analyse the effectiveness of decision-making in the disbursement of funds from the ERDF for the selected tourism services. In the theoretical part of the article, the model for the assessment of the effectiveness of the ERDF management system was developed. This model is built based on the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method, used to assess the effectiveness of community programmes. In the empirical part of the article, the verification of the model was carried out following the example of the tourism sector of the NUTS 2 region of Podlasie. The obtained results allow concluding that the developed deadweight assessment model can be used in practice for the evaluation of the efficiency of the ERDF management. The conducted research indicates that the method of Propensity Score Matching (PSM), using the Neyman-Rubin model based on counterfactual studies, allows assessing the decision-making effectiveness in the disbursement of funds from the ERDF. Creating counterfactual situations in the models of evaluation of infrastructural actions serves for the identification of the effect of an independent event. The effect of an independent event measures the negative, unintended consequences of the undertaken decisions. It informs about the loss of alternative possibilities of allocating funds for other purposes.

Management of the Tourist Region - Identification of the determinants of Innovation

“…It is claimed that their task is to formulate regional development financing programmes, including those financing tourism, which have an impact on high availability of nonreturnable financial resources. Similar results were obtained by Lewandowska and Stopa [46], Panfiluk [9,53,54], Mahr [36], Liu and Cheng [35]. The management system implements the objectives of tourism innovation policies, which is in line with the results of Rodríguez, Williams and Hall [54], Ottenbacher and Gnoth [44], Mahr [36], Liu and Cheng [35].…”

Do small public grants boost tourism firms’ performance?

“…This effect is greater in highly attractive destinations than in less attractive destinations, where attractiveness is measured by the proportion of the total average nights spent by tourists in hotels within a destination to its population. Panfiluk (2016) also analyzes the effectiveness of funding for tourism services. The author notes that the grant investigated enabled 64% of targeted businesses to achieve the full objectives of the Regional Operational Programme.…”

“…Evaluating the impact of public subsidies is also necessary for tourism stakeholders to devise policies and allocate resources effectively (Song et al, 2012). Few studies in the literature do evaluate the effectiveness of public subsidies on tourism firms and provide evidence on additionality in firm performance (Bernini and Pellegrini, 2013; Panfiluk, 2016; Tundis et al, 2017). However, these studies focus primarily on the effectiveness of relatively large tourism grants.…”