Tourism's contribution to human development and the reduction of poverty and inequality: Empirical evidence at a regional level in Spain

Scientific literature has begun to analyze the capacity of tourism as a development instrument, although until now, it has relied on a country level focus. This innovative work analyzes the relationship between tourism and development at a regional level, establishing the hypothesis that tourism affects different dimensions of development (human development, poverty, and income inequality) and, furthermore, that differences exist at a regional level within the same country. Regional data from Spain are used for the 2004-2021 period, applying the Dumitrescu and Hurlin causality test to analyze the relationships between these variables in global terms while also disaggregating between touristic and non-touristic regions. The results only verify that tourism has a positive effect on improving human development in regions of high tourism intensity. These results suggest the need for tourism policies that are linked to the regional administrative level.