Abstract
In a global setting where the requirements for development equally address the economic viability but also social and environmental sustainability, the healthy and efficient growth of rural communities poses substantial challenges. Our paper focuses on specific conditions and constraints that influence the progress of agritourism business initiatives as viable entrepreneurial solutions for self-sustainable rural communities in Romania. To assess the impact of economic, social and tourism-related factors on agritourism entrepreneurship for Romanian counties during 2010–2015 periods, we conducted several Ordinary Least Square regression models. The results emphasize that economic indicators like regional GDP and kilometers of national roads have a positive influence on the number of agritourism business units; also, a positive impact on agritourism entrepreneurship was identified for tourism-related factors like: number of employees and corresponding salaries in tourism, total tourists, share of tourism firms and their turnover in total firms and turnover of the region, as well as preference of tourists for agritourism. The conclusions highlight the direct link between resilient agritourism entrepreneurship and sustainable development of the region and open further research directions.
Highlights
The recent interest in agritourism entrepreneurship is mainly due to its contribution to support the sustainable development of the rural communities
Initially we looked at four indicators that refer to the development of agritourism in rural communities in Romania—investigated by counties—and these are: total number of agritourism boarding houses (TABH), total beds in agritourism boarding houses (TB), total tourists in agritourism boarding houses (TT) and, respectively, total nights spent in agritourism boarding houses (TN)
Initially we looked at four indicators that refer to the development of agritourism in rural communities in Romania—investigated by counties—and these are: total number of agritourism boarding houses (TABH), total beds in agritourism boarding houses (TB), total tourists in agritourism boarding houses (TT) and, respectively, total nights spent in agritourism Sbuosatarindaibnilgityh2o0u17s,e9s, 2(2T0N5 )
Summary
The recent interest in agritourism entrepreneurship is mainly due to its contribution to support the sustainable development of the rural communities. Answering to the present socio-economic changes, technological transformation and need to preserve local environment, resilient agritourism entrepreneurship is an integral part of green business. The aim of our paper is to investigate if economic, social and tourism-related factors contribute to the development of agritourism entrepreneurship. The selection of the factors to be analyzed (like GDP, total turnover, kilometers of national roads, unemployment, tourists, employees and salaries in tourism etc.) took into account the inner nature of agritourism entrepreneurship—a business initiative based on local conditions and a specific form of rural tourism. The contribution of the paper to the agritourism entrepreneurship field of study is at least a two-folded one, intended to fill-in the gaps identified in the specialized literature We focused our research on Romania, due to its strong similarities with other recently adhered countries to the European Union and its particular features leading to a nascent entrepreneurial spirit: a post-communist country with a relatively young democracy, an emerging economy with a high growth rate mainly based on internal consumption [1] with a balanced ratio between urban and rural population and one of the newest EU Member States.
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