Economic performance amongst English seaside towns

Abstract

Within urban and tourism studies, although much research has focused on uneven city prosperity and competitiveness, little is known about factors influencing seaside town economic performance. We adopt a place-based approach to understand its determinants amongst 58 of England’s largest seaside towns drawing on a bespoke database. Through Partial Least Square analysis, Spearman’s Rank Correlation and general linear regression modelling for panel data with random effects, we identify the ‘leaders’ and ‘laggers’ along with a set of associated socio-economic characteristics. These insights enhance understanding of how and why economic performance differs amongst these towns. We highlight implications for addressing such socio-economic disparities across seaside towns, which has wider destination relevance, and use these findings to inform policy which seeks to raise the productivity potential of ‘lagging’ towns.