Qualitative Assessment of Agritourism Development Support Schemes in Italy, the USA and South Africa

Giulia Grillini, Giovanna Sacchi, Lisa Chase, Jacqui Taylor, Christelle C. Van Zyl, Peet Van Der Merwe, Thomas Streifeneder and Christian Fischer
Additional contact information
Giulia Grillini: Faculty of Science and Technology, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, 39100 Bolzano, Italy
Lisa Chase: Vermont Tourism Research Center, University of Vermont Extension, Brattleboro, VT 05301, USA
Jacqui Taylor: School for Tourism Management, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, Potchefstroom 2531, South Africa
Christelle C. Van Zyl: Agritourism Africa, Rural Tourism Africa, Gansbaai 7220, South Africa
Peet Van Der Merwe: Agritourism Africa, Rural Tourism Africa, Gansbaai 7220, South Africa
Thomas Streifeneder: Institute for Regional Development, EURAC Research, 39100 Bolzano, Italy
Christian Fischer: Faculty of Science and Technology, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, 39100 Bolzano, Italy

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 13, 1-23

Abstract: Agritourism has grown rapidly in many countries worldwide. However, for all this success, little is known about the concrete implementation, actual extent, and effectiveness of public and private agritourism support measures aimed at keeping up farming and promoting agritourism. Hence, the objective of this study is to provide an overview and a comparison of agritourism supports and policies in different countries. To this purpose, specific political, legal, financial, and promotional instruments for agritourism have been investigated. The focus is on three countries with strong agritourism sectors and different socio-cultural characteristics: Italy, the USA, and South Africa. The analysis of these case study areas is motivated by examination of agritourism from different continents with a diverging status of development as well as history. Italy and the USA are two countries with well-established and successful agritourism sectors; however, these are based on very different framework conditions, resulting in specific development paths and various supportive driving factors. South Africa has been included as a representative case study of a developing country where agritourism operations are growing rapidly through the support of an active private sector association. By assessing commonalities and differences in public and private support backgrounds in three different continents, the present study represents the first exploratory attempt to understand the influences of public and private national and regional framework conditions for agritourism development. Our findings suggest that both public and private supports contribute to success; however, clear criteria and further research are needed in order to fully understand the implications.

Keywords: agritourism policies; agritourism regulations; tourism support measures; subsidies; agritourism development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/13/7903/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/13/7903/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:13:p:7903-:d:851027

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().