Rural Tourism Governance: Determinants of Policy-makers’ Support for Tourism Development

Abstract

Governance is now generally accepted as a convenient conceptual term to characterise contemporary patterns of collective decision-making, particularly in the local public domain. However, there is a dearth of research into the attitudes of rural governance policy-makers towards tourism, despite the influence of the local rural policy arena on tourism development in rural areas. In order to fill this gap, this research aims to explore governance factors that influence rural decision-makers’ support for tourism. A cross-sectional field survey was designed and applied on the LEADER11. A French acronym derived from “Liaison Entre Actions de Développement de l’Économie Rurale”, meaning “Links between the rural economy and development actions”. network in Hungary and analysed by multivariate data analysis methods. Results highlighted differences in the preferences of local planners regarding the dimensions of integrated rural tourism (IRT). In particular, findings suggest that local rural planners favour those qualities of IRT that enhance complementarity, sustainability, stakeholder and sectoral integration over the scale of IRT.