Relationships between road transport indicators and expenditure of visitors in the context of European countries' tourism competitiveness

Abstract

Research background: Transport represents a dynamic element in the tourism system. In recent decades, transport has been a subject of research mainly from the point of view of the sustainability of the economic systems and the environmental aspects. Purpose of the article: This study aimed to quantify the relationships between the selected indicators of road transport development and the expenditure of tourism visitors in the selected European countries in the context of the development of their competitiveness. Methods: The road transport indicators were applied in the research trajectories: density of road (DNST), hare of road infrastructure investment (SH INF), share of motorways (SH MWY), and indicators of visitor expenditure for business (BTS), leisure (LTS), domestic (DTS) and foreign (VEFS) tourism. In the first phase of the analyses, the countries of the European part of the OECD (N = 27; period of 2010-2018) were divided into two clusters based on the development index (HDI) and the innovation index (GII) through the cluster analysis. The two groups were created - more and less developed countries. The results of the analysis of differences declare that there are differences between these groups in the DNST, SH INF, BTS, LTS, and DTS indicators. The correlation and regression analysis methods were applied to quantify the relationships between the variables. Findings & value added: The difference between the groups of the countries was also shown in the relationships between the road transport development indicators and visitor spending. In more developed countries, the relationship between the traffic indicators on BTS and DTS was significant. In less developed countries, significant relationships were identified with LST and VEFS. This finding underscores regional disparities and cautions against assuming that what policy guidelines from developed countries will be effective in less developed ones. Therefore, when designing improvement policies, it is vital to consider countries in terms of their level of development.