Impact of the rural tourism on the employment in Spain: An approach at a province extent

Abstract

Rural tourism is an activity with growing importance in the rural environment, as it helps to complement the agricultural income and, all the more, to mitigate the depopulation in the rural areas. Rural tourism should be understood both as an economic option for the rural areas and as a strategic drive for the territorial development that, in turn, helps to develop those rural areas with poor economic and social conditions. Therefore, rural tourism is studied as an economic alternative for both the reinvigoration and development of rural areas, by analyzing how this activity impacts the employment in these areas. Variables providing information on three different thematic lines are analyzed: economy, demographics and rural tourism. To carry out the data analysis, this work relies on factor analysis, cluster analysis, and discriminant analysis. It focuses on three factors: tourism-jobs dynamism, tourism-rural dynamism, and quality tourism vs. job-deprived provinces. Based on these three factors the Spanish provinces are then classified in three groups regarding how the rural tourism impacts the employment, which shows an uneven influence depending on the province involved. Asturias is the Spanish province where rural tourism has impacted most positively the employment. On the other hand, the provinces Cádiz, Málaga, Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife, despite having a rural tourism driven towards the environmental quality of their protected spaces, do not report a positive impact on the employment.