Abstract
Relationships between tourism development, quality of life and sustainable performance are very important topics and benchmarks in long-term policies and strategies at global, regional and local levels. Starting from the concerns expressed by researchers and international organizations, as well as the characteristics of the European region, our research aims to identify these relationships in the context of increasing pressure from stakeholders on the adoption of decisive measures in order to limit the negative effects manifested globally in the context of climate change. Using cluster analysis, we managed to identify relevant groups of countries, based on the selected variables. The results of the study highlight the existence of a positive relationship between the development of tourism and the increase of the quality of life, as between the level of sustainable performance and tourism intensity, opening the possibility of future research on the causal relationships between the selected variables and the promotion of coherent public policies that support the sustainable development.
Highlights
Tourism has always been and will remain a way of progress for all countries of the world, being an important driver of the use of natural and anthropic resources, of cultural resources, traditions and local customs, connecting people from all over the planet, bringing real profits for the host communities, and directly contributing to GDP growth and employment
A second objective of our research is to identify the level of performance in terms of tourism development, quality of life and sustainable development, in order to establish a foundation for relevant stakeholders, especially researchers and policy-makers, to make possible the transfer of good practices from countries that record high performance to countries that could improve their current levels of development
In order to evaluate the relationship between tourism development, quality of life and sustainable performance in the countries of the European Union, we analyzed the evolution of the mutations that occurred in the structure of the selected variables, between the year of the Paris Agreement (2015) and the year 2018, which is the last year for which complete statistical data are reported
Summary
Tourism has always been and will remain a way of progress for all countries of the world, being an important driver of the use of natural and anthropic resources, of cultural resources, traditions and local customs, connecting people from all over the planet, bringing real profits for the host communities, and directly contributing to GDP growth and employment. The economic, social and environmental performance of tourism companies are both a consequence and a stimulating factor for the entire local, regional and global economy [1,2,3]. It is known that tourism can be a trigger factor of environmental crises, where we identify the phenomenon of overcrowding or tourist pressure, as well as the phenomenon of artificial inflation by raising prices at the level of tourist destinations and, all the negative effects on local communities, including aspects of their quality of life [4,5]. As a tourist region, continues to hold global supremacy in terms of revenue and number of travelers (welcoming half of the world’s international tourist arrivals) and important positions from the point of view of economically developed countries, quality of life and, not least, from the point of view of achieving sustainable development goals [6]
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