Measuring tourism sustainability for Italian regions: A proposal

Tourism is certainly one of the main drivers for the economic development of territories. However, its development needs to be strengthened and improved to ensure long-term competitiveness for the tourism and travel sector. Sustainability, both in general and in tourism, is widely acknowledged as a multidimensional concept involving economic, social and environmental aspects. In this article, we propose a composite indicator to measure tourism sustainability for Italian regions in the period 2010-2021 (12 years). Our composite has a two-level structure accounting for the contributions of the economic, social and environmental dimensions, and is based on a non-compensatory (geometric) aggregation of 14 basic indicators through weights endogenously determined according to the Benefit of Doubt (BoD) approach. In this way, we explore not only the level of tourism sustainability and its dimensions, but also their evolution over time. In our results, regions with both a high average score in sustainability and a high improvement of it over time include Lombardy and Abruzzo. Instead, Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Aosta Valley and Umbria have the lowest average score and also show little or no improvement over time, while Veneto, Trentino-South Tyrol, Sardinia and Basilicata have a high average score but also a high worsening of it over time. For the economic dimension, the region with the best compromise between average score and growth is Tuscany, while Aosta Valley exhibits the lowest average score together with a negative growth. For the social dimension, Tuscany still shows the best compromise between average score and growth, while the worst compromise (low average score and high decrease over time) is owned by Sardinia and Abruzzo. For the environmental dimension, Abruzzo and Aosta Valley show both a high average score and a high improvement of it over time, while Emilia-Romagna shows the lowest average score with an almost null growth, and Basilicata exhibits the highest average score but with a decreasing trend. In overall, the environmental dimension provides the greatest average contribution to the composite (41.0%), followed by the economic (37.4%) and the social (21.6%) dimensions.