Smart Specialization, Regional Growth and Applications to European Union Cohesion Policy

Tourism Diversification and Its Implications for Smart Specialisation

“…The embeddedness of regional industries, labour and activities is particularly relevant in non-core regions, which tend to be dominated by a small range of strongly interlinked sectors [7]. In tourism, embeddedness refers to specific local culture and natural resources, which contribute to knowledge of developing new niche tourism markets e.g., health tourism, ecotourism, gastronomy [3] as well as to giving a sense of exclusiveness in class and status position [13].…”

“…A set of similarities and complementarities between knowledge bases and between products and services of different industries in destinations engenders integration of tourism services and products [10]. Connectivity between firms includes transactions associated with trade, transportation, flows of passengers, information and finance, knowledge interactions, management and international decision-making capabilities [7,25,97]. Tourism can link regional networks and individual actors to other regions/ countries by providing infrastructure, accommodation and communication facilities [19].…”

“…Knowledge and information from tourists, suppliers or producers may spread beyond tourism specialised territories, activating externalities and facilitate international innovation networks, allowing access to deeper knowledge flows provided to both tourism and non-tourism firms [22,47]. Tourism therefore can be identified as one of the peripheral regions' most connected industries to other advanced regions, which is pivotal in regional diversification [7].…”

“…Tourism is seen as an alternative to decline in traditional industries such as agriculture in general, particularly in lagging or peripheral regions, where territorial policies promote diversification strategies [7,8]. This is even more the case where localities depend on tourism for their diversification and revival) [9].…”

Regional economic development in Europe: the role of total factor productivity

“…First, it is the European Commission's explicit goal to reduce economic disparities between EU regions in order to promote social cohesion (European Commission, 2010). 1 Second, contemporary EU Cohesion Policy emphasizes the role of technological progress, innovation and knowledge externalities (Barca, 2009;McCann & Ortega-Argilés, 2015), recognizing that improvements in productivity are key to enhancing regional economic performance, and that innovation and knowledge creation are critical to achieve such productivity gains. 2 Against this background, this paper explores three related research questions:…”