Spatial Variation in Tourism and Investment Potential in the Context of Sustainable Development—A Case Study of Staszowski County

Abstract

The aim of the study was to assess spatial variation in the tourism and investment potential of Staszowski County and to indicate possibilities for sustainable development of tourism in the area. The method of synthetic measures was used for the analysis, taking into account 45 features characterizing the tourism and investment space, including tourism assets, the state and protection of the environment, transport accessibility, hotels, eating establishments and supplementary facilities, service and technical infrastructure, population relations, and commune finances. The features were analysed using geostatistical and statistical tools. The analyses, despite certain methodological limitations, indicated that there is still great potential for more sustainable development of tourism in the county. The spatial distribution of the features did not show a tendency to form clusters, but most of them were located in the centre of the study area, in two communes—Staszów and Połaniec. The most attractive commune in terms of tourism and investment was Staszów, with strong tourism assets and a well-developed service and technical infrastructure. This commune, however, has one of the lowest environmental protection indices in the county.

Natura 2000 Network vs. Tourism and Investment Potential of Communes—A Case Study of Czarnkowsko-Trzcianecki County

“…In contrast, the other nine communes had a value below 0.500. The values of tourism and investment potential for Czarnkowsko-Trzcianecki County were within the values obtained for Lubaczowski County (from 0.274 to 0.702) [33] and Staszowski County (from 0.282 to 0.832) [30]. Both in the case of Lubaczowski and Staszowski County, as in the case of Bielsko County, only one commune obtained a higher value than the others.…”

“…The county's tourism and investment potential was definitely lower compared to the most attractive regions of Poland located on the coast or in the mountains [31]. The obtained values in the range from 0.342 to 0.624 were similar to the results obtained for counties in other parts of Poland, where similar features and Gołembski's method were used [30][31][32]. The results were the most comparable with the tourism and investment potential of Bielsko County (from 0.39 to 0.67) [32].…”

“…This method makes it possible to compare and objectively evaluate spatial objects (e.g., counties or communes) that have many characteristics. In the present research, a modification of the Gołembski method of multidimensional comparative analysis, proposed by Lisiak-Zieli ńska and Ziernicka-Wojtaszek [30], was used to evaluate the development of the tourism and investment area of Czarnkowsko-Trzcianecki County. Information about the communes (the smallest administrative unit with reliable statistical data) was obtained from the Bank of Local Data (as of 2019), available studies on the communes, and spatial data-Topographic Objects Database (BDOT) from national geodetic and cartographic resources (as of 2017-2020).…”

“…After data collection, the diagnostic features were standardized according to the 'maximum shift' method proposed by Lisiak-Zieli ńska and Ziernicka-Wojtaszek [30]. In this method, the value of a given diagnostic feature in the commune was subtracted from the maximum value observed in the analyzed group of communes for that feature.…”

“…After standardization and normalization, weights were assigned to the diagnostic features according to the proposal of Lisiak-Zieli ńska and Ziernicka-Wojtaszek [30] with the modification of some weights (Table S1). The values of the weights depended on the importance of each feature in the assessment of a particular division and thus also on the assessment of tourism and investment attractiveness.…”