Exploring Creative Tourism Based on the Cultural and Creative Cities (C3) Index and Using Bootstrap Confidence Intervals

Mercedes Mareque, Elena de Prada Creo and Marcos Álvarez-Díaz
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Mercedes Mareque: Department of Financial Economics and Accountancy, University of Vigo, 32004 Ourense, Spain
Elena de Prada Creo: Department of English, French and German Philology University of Vigo, 32004 Ourense, Spain
Marcos Álvarez-Díaz: Department of Fundamental Economics, University of Vigo, 32004 Ourense, Spain

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 9, 1-17

Abstract: Creative tourism is a novel segment of the tourism market that may turn into a great opportunity for small cities to attract visitors. Thus, it can be a possible economic and social driver for local development. Despite its potentiality, not much empirical research has been conducted to explore the specific strengths and weaknesses of developing creative tourism in small cities, probably due to the lack of reliable data. Our study aims to fill this gap by using the C3 Index, a composite indicator developed by the Joint Research Center-European Commission, as the data source, and the bootstrap method as a statistical tool to detect significant differences between small and large cities. Our findings reveal that the smallest cities show positive features to foster creative tourism (e.g., they have at least as good cultural infrastructures and cultural participation as the largest cities). However, in some other aspects, small cities still have room to improve (e.g., improvements in local and international connections or further development of the cultural and creative sector).

Keywords: creative tourism; small cities; C3 Index; bootstrapped confidence intervals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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