Is Participation in Tourism Market an Opportunity for Everyone? Some Evidence from Italy

Abstract

Exploring the main determinants of tourism participation at national and international level, the paper investigates if there are differences in tourism consumption behaviour among Italian families which reflect disparities in their standard of living. To achieve this a Heckman model has been used on a huge sample of Italian households over the period [1997][1998][1999][2000][2001][2002][2003][2004][2005][2006][2007]. Results show that participation in the tourism market is strongly affected by the personal characteristics of individuals and that tourism consumption is an income sensitive good. The analysis reveals that tourism is generally a luxury good reflecting the disparities in the standard of living among Italian families. We have found that participation in the tourism market is affected not only by economic constraints, but also by cultural and territorial factors.

Living standard and Chinese tourism participation

“…However, considering only the participation or the consumption decision does not reflect the real tourists' decision-making process; the two decisions are not independent and influenced by different sets of variables. A stream of research has recognised this issue and contained the investigation of both decisions simultaneously (Bernini & Cracolici, 2015, 2016Bernini, Cracolici, & Nijkamp, 2017;Jang & Ham, 2009;Jang, Ham, & Hong, 2007;Nicolau & Más, 2005a;Yang, Wu, & Lu, 2019), by means of double-huddle models, as the Heckman (Heckman, 1979) or Cragg model (Cragg, 1971). Double hurdle models consist of a Probit model for the first decision of participating in tourism or not, and a model for the second decision on how much to spend on tourism.…”

“…Several studies evidence that income has a positive effect on the decision to participate in the tourism market (Alegre et al, 2009;Eugenio-Martin & Campos-Soria,-2011;Fleischer & Rivlin, 2009) and its impact is higher for individuals having medium-or high-income levels (Nicolau & Más, 2005a). Therefore, tourism consumption is an income-sensitive good, generally being a luxury good (Bernini & Cracolici, 2015, 2016. Bernini et al (2017) also evidence that, conditional to the socio-demographic and economic covariates, different tourism expenditure behaviour can be detected and that differences in tourism participation among households reflect inequalities in living standards.…”

Place‐based Attributes and Spatial Expenditure Behavior in Tourism

“…As regards the second group, Family is a set of socioeconomic variables related to the family and its household head. Specifically, we consider the tenure status of the home, the occupation status, the job position, and the level of education of the household head as proxies of economic constraints (see, e.g., Jang and Ham, ; Alegre et al, , ; Bernini and Cracolici, ). Furthermore, the level of education along with the gender of the household head enables us to capture differences in tourists’ preferences.…”

More wealth, less leisure? Effect of housing wealth on tourism expenditure in China

“…One component of household consumption, namely, tourism expenditure, has recently been gaining popularity in China, and the number of tourists as well as tourism expenditure per capita are both increasing (Figure 1). In contrast to the consumption of inelastic goods like necessities, tourism expenditure is income-sensitive and more elastic (Bernini and Cracolici, 2016). As income increases, households spend more on tourism products and services (Alegre et al, 2009; Eugenio-Martin and Campos-Soria, 2011; Fleischer and Rivlin, 2009).…”

“…Households can sell their liquid assets in the open market to finance the tourism consumption (Besley et al, 2008; Hurst and Stafford, 2004; Mankiw and Zeldes, 1991). For the limited studies with illiquid wealth, they tend to use the housing tenure to measure whether households are financially constrained (Alegre et al, 2010; Bernini and Cracolici, 2016; Jang and Ham, 2009). Considering the locality of housing price appreciation, it is important to investigate whether the heterogeneity in housing price on the tourism expenditure.…”