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.