Unraveling the links between development, growth, and tourism specialization. A country-panel analysis using self-organizing maps

Bibiana Lanzilotta, Miriam Scaglione and Verónica Segarra

Tourism Economics, 2025, vol. 31, issue 1, 140-156

Abstract: This research explores the relationship between development, economic growth and tourism specialisation in 123 countries between 1995 and 2019. Based on the hypothesis that a single model is inadequate to capture the complex dynamics between these variables, we classify countries before studying the link within each category. The empirical strategy is based on the application of an objective country classification procedure, known as Kohonen’s self-organising maps. This methodology, novel for this field of study, allows countries to be grouped based on the dynamics of several variables. Three distinct groups emerge from this process. We find that causality from tourism specialization to GDP growth and from tourism to human development are observed in low-income countries. While no reverse causality between HDI and tourism is observed in any of the specifications, causality from GDP growth to tourism is verified in the group of high-income countries with heightened tourism specialisation and development.

Keywords: economic performance; economic development; panel data causality; self-organizing maps; tourism development; C01; F43; Z32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13548166241246295 (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:sae:toueco:v:31:y:2025:i:1:p:140-156

DOI: 10.1177/13548166241246295

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Tourism Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().