Agritourism and local development: A methodology for assessing the role of public contributions in the creation of competitive advantage

Agriculture has been an economic mainstay of countries throughout history. Recently, its importance and essential role in local and regional growth and development have also received due acknowledgment. However, agritourism entrepreneurs often lack the necessary means, when relying only on their own funds alone. For these reasons, targeted aid measures are provided at the regional, national and European levels, provided they fulfill specified subjective and objective eligibility criteria. This investigation aims at understanding the rationale, if any, according to which the Public Administration allots such contributions. To this end, a two-tiered analysis was conducted on the data collected by way of a comprehensive search. Specifically, the first of the two tiers refers to a merely descriptive analysis, by which a number of underlying facts and data points were observed. Subsequently, using the R programming language and statistical environment, the second-tier, that is, the statistical analysis, was conducted so as to substantiate the results. This latter analysis served as the basis upon which a statistical model could be devised and whose purpose was to clarify the relationship between the funding awarded and other related variables. These findings ultimately served to identify identifiable criteria according to which the Region awarded grants to a given agritourism entrepreneur or not. Bringing such models to entrepreneurs’ knowledge may prove of practical significance, permitting them to appraise, beforehand, whether it would be worthwhile to invest their time and money in a specific agritourism business project. Nevertheless, for sake of clarity, the results deriving from any particular assessment apply only to the specific case investigated and, thus, should not be generalized. However, with appropriate tools, these statistical models could be adapted to any context, thereby overcoming this inherent limitation, and thus be exploited to the potential benefit of many entrepreneurs. The conclusion is that changes are underway in the supply of agritourism, which increasingly focuses on promoting, developing and enhancing the value of the rural and natural environment.