Qualitative Assessment of Agritourism Development Support Schemes in Italy, the USA and South Africa

Abstract

Agritourism has grown rapidly in many countries worldwide. However, for all this success, little is known about the concrete implementation, actual extent, and effectiveness of public and private agritourism support measures aimed at keeping up farming and promoting agritourism. Hence, the objective of this study is to provide an overview and a comparison of agritourism supports and policies in different countries. To this purpose, specific political, legal, financial, and promotional instruments for agritourism have been investigated. The focus is on three countries with strong agritourism sectors and different socio-cultural characteristics: Italy, the USA, and South Africa. The analysis of these case study areas is motivated by examination of agritourism from different continents with a diverging status of development as well as history. Italy and the USA are two countries with well-established and successful agritourism sectors; however, these are based on very different framework conditions, resulting in specific development paths and various supportive driving factors. South Africa has been included as a representative case study of a developing country where agritourism operations are growing rapidly through the support of an active private sector association. By assessing commonalities and differences in public and private support backgrounds in three different continents, the present study represents the first exploratory attempt to understand the influences of public and private national and regional framework conditions for agritourism development. Our findings suggest that both public and private supports contribute to success; however, clear criteria and further research are needed in order to fully understand the implications.

Cluster Identification of Agrotourism in Banten Province Indonesia

“…There were three important variables in this study, namely the number of agrotourism sites, the number of populations, and the number of restaurants. The number of agrotourism objects could change over time [13][14] so that the newest data set from the Tourism Department in 2023 was indispensable. The number of populations was also required because the local population could be competitive with agrotourism [15].…”

The Moderating Role of Technological Knowledge in the Relationship Between Perceived Sustainable Marketing and Intention to Agritourism

“…The perceived environment, which encompasses individuals' observations and interpretations of the natural and built environment associated with agritourism sites, plays a critical role in shaping tourists' attitudes. Positive perceptions of the environment, including its preservation and the sustainable practices employed, contribute significantly to forming favourable attitudes towards agritourism [9], [10]. These attitudes are further influenced by perceived sustainable marketing, a concept that refers to the marketing efforts perceived by potential tourists that highlight the sustainability efforts of agritourism operations, including environmental stewardship, economic benefits to local communities, and social responsibility [11].…”

Spatial Distribution Heterogeneity and Influencing Factors of Different Leisure Agriculture Types in the City

“…Scholars have rigorously differentiated rural tourism from leisure agriculture tourism in some earlier studies [13,14], and they typically felt that rural tourism comprises leisure agriculture tourism. Due to geographical features and analytical viewpoint variations, leisure agricultural tourism is still tied to agrotourism, agri-leisure, ecoagriculture, and sightseeing agriculture [15][16][17][18].…”