The Role of UNESCO Cultural Heritage and Cultural Sector in Tourism Development: The Case of EU Countries
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper aims at testing the effect of UNESCO Cultural Heritage and cultural sector -measured by government expenditure for culture and cultural employment- in the tourism sector of the 27-EU countries. The tourism variables considered to measure the impact of the selected cultural variables are two demand indicators (i.e. overnights and international tourism receipts) and one supply indicator (tourism employment). This paper is on the strand of the literature on the relationship between tourism and economic growth. Nothing is said if this relationship is sustainable or not. We cannot consider sustainable a tourism development model just because is based on culture! We can count many cases of overexploited cultural sites that do not really represent a good example of sustainable tourism development (i.e. Venice in Italy).
Therefore, my first comment is: please, explain better what you mean for sustainable tourism development. In my knowledge, a sustainable tourism development model should consider the carrying capacity of a tourism destination, the seasonality of tourism flows: we can assume that cultural tourism is a less seasonal tourism and can help to avoid congestion in the peak seasons in superstar destinations. The supply of cultural services measured by the government culture expenditures and the cultural employment could support this assumption but the relationship has to better explained. Moreover, the two Eurostat explanatory variables, “general government expenditure in culture” and “cultural employment”, have some weaknesses. “General government expenditure in culture” comprehends only the expenditures in culture of the central government while public expenditures in culture are mostly devoted to regions, provinces and municipalities in the UE-27. “Cultural employment” comprehends not only the employment of creative workers but also the employment of administrative staff in cultural services and often the percentage of administrative staff prevails. Obviously, the data cannot have any relationship with tourism flows and generally the data are not so reliable.
Other cultural indicators should have been considered more related to the cultural demand than to the cultural supply like in the mentioned paper Cellini and Cuccia (2019).
Generally, the appropriate and update review of the literature is not always precise. For example, it seems that the reference 7, a publication edited in 2012, reports data on the virtual access to museums and heritage sites during the COVID-19! Moreover, reference 21 does not take in account the international arrivals.
Thus, my second suggestion is: please, check the coherence of the references reported in the literature review.
As far as the tourism indicators concern, the choice of the international tourism receipts could be disputable as this indicator is based on surveys on samples of international tourists and it is not mentioned if it is reported in nominal or in real terms. Nothing is mentioned about the potential role of the exchange rate in the period considered (2008-2018). The fact that inflation has a positive and significant effect on the international tourism receipts has to be explained (perhaps, it could be simply due to the fact that tourism receipts are in nominal terms).
Large part of the empirical studies prefers to measure tourism flows in terms of overnights and stays because if we want to consider the trend of domestic and international tourism receipts we have to consider them in real terms and in a common currency. Moreover, I wonder whether the GDPPC too is considered in real terms.
As a minor suggestion, an English language revision is necessary.
In sum, the paper is an empirical study on tourism and growth that could have some elements of novelty and scientific interest. However, the paper has to be improved and better focused. At the moment, the use (or more properly, the abuse) of the term “sustainable” can be only justified with the name and the interests of the journal where the paper is submitted.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Please find enclosed the revised version of the paper The Role of UNESCO Cultural Heritage and Cultural Sector in Tourism Development: The Case of EU Countries, which my co-authors and I would like to resubmit for consideration by the special issue of the Sustainability Journal under title: A European Perspective on Cultural Heritage as a Driver for Sustainable Development and Regional Resilience.
first of all, we would like to thank you on our behalf, not only for your thorough reading of the paper, but especially for the insightful comments and suggestions. We found your suggestions and comments well-targeted and extremely helpful and, as a consequence, we have included most of them in the revised version of the paper. All changes in the new version of the document have been highlighted.
We feel that the resulting paper has benefited from all these comments and is, consequently, much stronger and more clearly focused.
Dear reviewer,
Please find enclosed the revised version of the paper The Role of UNESCO Cultural Heritage and Cultural Sector in Tourism Development: The Case of EU Countries, which my co-authors and I would like to resubmit for consideration by the special issue of the Sustainability Journal under title: A European Perspective on Cultural Heritage as a Driver for Sustainable Development and Regional Resilience.
first of all, we would like to thank you on our behalf, not only for your thorough reading of the paper, but especially for the insightful comments and suggestions. We found your suggestions and comments well-targeted and extremely helpful and, as a consequence, we have included most of them in the revised version of the paper. All changes in the new version of the document have been highlighted.
We feel that the resulting paper has benefited from all these comments and is, consequently, much stronger and more clearly focused.
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
No1.
The paper aims at testing the effect of UNESCO Cultural Heritage and cultural sector -measured by government expenditure for culture and cultural employment- in the tourism sector of the 27-EU countries. The tourism variables considered to measure the impact of the selected cultural variables are two demand indicators (i.e. overnights and international tourism receipts) and one supply indicator (tourism employment). This paper is on the strand of the literature on the relationship between tourism and economic growth. Nothing is said if this relationship is sustainable or not. We cannot consider sustainable a tourism development model just because is based on culture! We can count many cases of overexploited cultural sites that do not really represent a good example of sustainable tourism development (i.e. Venice in Italy).
Therefore, my first comment is: please, explain better what you mean for sustainable tourism development. In my knowledge, a sustainable tourism development model should consider the carrying capacity of a tourism destination, the seasonality of tourism flows: we can assume that cultural tourism is a less seasonal tourism and can help to avoid congestion in the peak seasons in superstar destinations.
Authors' response:
Thank you for your comment. We highly appreciate it. Following the comment, we have modified our manuscript and focused on the link between tourism growth (demand and supply side) and UNESCO cultural heritage and cultural sector. Your comments helped us to clarify our research concept, and to improve and focus our research question. More precisely, due to your comments, we realised and agree that the first version of our manuscript did not cover the main dimensions of sustainable development. Thus, we rearranged the aim and the purpose of the research, and now it address the tourism growth in the EU 27 in period 2008-2018, while the tourism growth which is based on cultural sector development is considered to be more sustainable. In line with this, we have used the cultural sector indicators and UNESCO heritage as independent variables in the model, and we question them as the drivers of tourism growth in EU 27. Our results provide the base for further research, especially if the aim of the research would be to analyse the effects of UNESCO heritage and cultural sector development on destinations' tourism sustainable development (in first place considering the destinations’ carrying capacity and seasonality in the empirical modelling).
No.2
The supply of cultural services measured by the government culture expenditures and the cultural employment could support this assumption but the relationship has to better explained.
Moreover, the two Eurostat explanatory variables, “general government expenditure in culture” and “cultural employment”, have some weaknesses. “General government expenditure in culture” comprehends only the expenditures in culture of the central government while public expenditures in culture are mostly devoted to regions, provinces and municipalities in the UE-27. “Cultural employment” comprehends not only the employment of creative workers but also the employment of administrative staff in cultural services and often the percentage of administrative staff prevails. Obviously, the data cannot have any relationship with tourism flows and generally the data are not so reliable.
Other cultural indicators should have been considered more related to the cultural demand than to the cultural supply like in the mentioned paper Cellini and Cuccia (2019).
Authors' response:
Cultural sector development in our model is proxied by “general government expenditure in culture” and “cultural employment”. We assume that the cultural sector improvement in a destination is a prerequisite for cultural tourism supply development and also for tourism demand growth in a destination. Moreover, those proxies cover wider dimensions of cultural sector. The general government expenditure on culture comprises the expenditures of all government levels (central government, state government and local government), since our research is at country level, thus it comprehends the expenditures devoted also to regions, provinces and municipalities. Cultural employment includes all persons working in economic activities that are deemed cultural, irrespective of whether the person is employed in a cultural occupation. It also covers persons with a cultural occupation, irrespective of whether they are employed in a non-cultural economic activity. Cultural employment is defined in terms of the statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE Rev.2) and by the international standard classification of occupations (ISCO). Having this in mind, we suppose that the chosen variables are appropriate explanatory variables for country level research. Although we are aware that there are other cultural indicators that could be more related to tourism growth, those indicators are not included in our models since we are dealing with the country-level data. Therefore, including of those additional variables could be used in further research on regional level (NUTS 2, NUTS 3).
No.3
Generally, the appropriate and update review of the literature is not always precise. For example, it seems that the reference 7, a publication edited in 2012, reports data on the virtual access to museums and heritage sites during the COVID-19! Moreover, reference 21 does not take in account the international arrivals.
Thus, my second suggestion is: please, check the coherence of the references reported in the literature review.
Authors' response:
Thank you for your comments. We have corrected the reference 7 (new: it is refference 4, line 41) and text reffering to refference 21 (line 117) where we replaced the words “international arrival”s with “overnights” (reffering to the words „total nights slept“ used in the refference 21).
No. 4
As far as the tourism indicators concern, the choice of the international tourism receipts could be disputable as this indicator is based on surveys on samples of international tourists and it is not mentioned if it is reported in nominal or in real terms.
The fact that inflation has a positive and significant effect on the international tourism receipts has to be explained (perhaps, it could be simply due to the fact that tourism receipts are in nominal terms).
Authors' response:
Although international tourism receipt is an indicator which is based on surveys on samples of international tourists, it is one of the three commonly used variables for Tourism (for example it is one of two main indicators of tourism trends in UNWTO Tourism Highligts, etc.). To address your valuable comment on nominal and real terms data, we have adjusted the complete data base for inflation. Now our regressions use variables in real terms (the new results are similar to the results retrieved from the variables in nominal terms). In addition, the effects of inflation did not change when comparing the models in nominal and real terms. However, the inflation coefficient has slightly decreased, but inflation is still significant and positive.
No. 5
Nothing is mentioned about the potential role of the exchange rate in the period considered (2008-2018).
Authors' response:
Although we find this issue very important, we have omitted to explain in the paper our decision to not include the exchange rate in the models. Firstly, we have considered the problem of multicolinearity as explained by Quadri and Zheng (2010). They noticed that by using inflation and exchange rate in the same regression multicolinearity may arise and they indicate that inflation is not ideal indicator but that it safely tracks tourism and travel process. Additionally, they found that fluctuation of exchange rate does not affect international tourism demand in Italy. Moreover, Athari et al. (2020) found that the exchange rate has positive but not significant impact on tourism arrivals for two different development-level groups of OECD countries. On the other hand, they found that inflation is statistically significant and causes decline in number of tourists visiting the destinations. For 208 World economies Gan (2015) found that exchange rate is not always positively related to tourism demand, while relative prices are always significant with expected negative sign in the models.
In addition, our data cover EU 27 countries, and more than half of them are the members of EU monetary union, thus the ER does not reveal country specific characteristics. Therefore, we use the inflation as a better indicator of relevant control variable in our empirical model.
The relevant text on this issue is added to the revised paper, lines 208-223, and goes as follows:
“In the existing literature exchange rate is often considered as important determinant of tourism [41,49,59]. We decided to omit this variable for several reasons. Firstly, we have considered the problem of multicolinearity which can arise by including exchange rate and inflation in the same regression [60]. Additionally, they indicate that inflation securely tracks tourism and travel process while they found that exchange rate fluctuations do not affect international tourism demand in Italy. Moreover, [61] found that the exchange rate has positive but not significant impact on tourism arrivals for two groups of OECD countries. On the other hand, they found that inflation is statistically significant and causes decline in number of tourists visiting the destinations. For 208 World economies,[62] found that exchange rate is not always positively related to tourism demand, while relative prices are always significant with expected negative sign in the models. Finally, since our data cover EU 27 countries, where 19 of them are the members of EU monetary union, the exchange rates do not reveal country-specific characteristics. Therefore, the inflation is a better indicator of relevant control variable in our empirical model. INFL presents the change in the price level in a destination. Its rise affects negatively destination’s competitiveness and its share in the international tourism market [49]. Therefore, we expect negative relation between price and tourism development in our model.”
No. 6
The fact that inflation has a positive and significant effect on the international tourism receipts has to be explained (perhaps, it could be simply due to the fact that tourism receipts are in nominal terms). Large part of the empirical studies prefers to measure tourism flows in terms of overnights and stays because if we want to consider the trend of domestic and international tourism receipts we have to consider them in real terms and in a common currency. Moreover, I wonder whether the GDPPC too is considered in real terms.
Authors' response:
According to your useful comment, we decided to use all relevant variables in real terms and they are all in the same currency. Consequently, we have estimated regressions again. Results are very similar. Those estimations additionally confirm our previous results on the relationship between culture and tourism.
No. 7
As a minor suggestion, an English language revision is necessary. In sum, the paper is an empirical study on tourism and growth that could have some elements of novelty and scientific interest. However, the paper has to be improved and better focused. At the moment, the use (or more properly, the abuse) of the term “sustainable” can be only justified with the name and the interests of the journal where the paper is submitted.
Authors' response:
Thank you for your comments. We have revised the English language. Also, based on this and your previous valuable comments, the new version of the paper better addresses the issue of the term “sustainable”. For example, when explaining the empirical model we agree that it is tourism growth model and not sustainable tourism development model. Finally, we have also changed the words in the paper regarding sustainable tourism development.
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
No1.
The paper aims at testing the effect of UNESCO Cultural Heritage and cultural sector -measured by government expenditure for culture and cultural employment- in the tourism sector of the 27-EU countries. The tourism variables considered to measure the impact of the selected cultural variables are two demand indicators (i.e. overnights and international tourism receipts) and one supply indicator (tourism employment). This paper is on the strand of the literature on the relationship between tourism and economic growth. Nothing is said if this relationship is sustainable or not. We cannot consider sustainable a tourism development model just because is based on culture! We can count many cases of overexploited cultural sites that do not really represent a good example of sustainable tourism development (i.e. Venice in Italy).
Therefore, my first comment is: please, explain better what you mean for sustainable tourism development. In my knowledge, a sustainable tourism development model should consider the carrying capacity of a tourism destination, the seasonality of tourism flows: we can assume that cultural tourism is a less seasonal tourism and can help to avoid congestion in the peak seasons in superstar destinations.
Authors' response:
Thank you for your comment. We highly appreciate it. Following the comment, we have modified our manuscript and focused on the link between tourism growth (demand and supply side) and UNESCO cultural heritage and cultural sector. Your comments helped us to clarify our research concept, and to improve and focus our research question. More precisely, due to your comments, we realised and agree that the first version of our manuscript did not cover the main dimensions of sustainable development. Thus, we rearranged the aim and the purpose of the research, and now it address the tourism growth in the EU 27 in period 2008-2018, while the tourism growth which is based on cultural sector development is considered to be more sustainable. In line with this, we have used the cultural sector indicators and UNESCO heritage as independent variables in the model, and we question them as the drivers of tourism growth in EU 27. Our results provide the base for further research, especially if the aim of the research would be to analyse the effects of UNESCO heritage and cultural sector development on destinations' tourism sustainable development (in first place considering the destinations’ carrying capacity and seasonality in the empirical modelling).
No.2
The supply of cultural services measured by the government culture expenditures and the cultural employment could support this assumption but the relationship has to better explained.
Moreover, the two Eurostat explanatory variables, “general government expenditure in culture” and “cultural employment”, have some weaknesses. “General government expenditure in culture” comprehends only the expenditures in culture of the central government while public expenditures in culture are mostly devoted to regions, provinces and municipalities in the UE-27. “Cultural employment” comprehends not only the employment of creative workers but also the employment of administrative staff in cultural services and often the percentage of administrative staff prevails. Obviously, the data cannot have any relationship with tourism flows and generally the data are not so reliable.
Other cultural indicators should have been considered more related to the cultural demand than to the cultural supply like in the mentioned paper Cellini and Cuccia (2019).
Authors' response:
Cultural sector development in our model is proxied by “general government expenditure in culture” and “cultural employment”. We assume that the cultural sector improvement in a destination is a prerequisite for cultural tourism supply development and also for tourism demand growth in a destination. Moreover, those proxies cover wider dimensions of cultural sector. The general government expenditure on culture comprises the expenditures of all government levels (central government, state government and local government), since our research is at country level, thus it comprehends the expenditures devoted also to regions, provinces and municipalities. Cultural employment includes all persons working in economic activities that are deemed cultural, irrespective of whether the person is employed in a cultural occupation. It also covers persons with a cultural occupation, irrespective of whether they are employed in a non-cultural economic activity. Cultural employment is defined in terms of the statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE Rev.2) and by the international standard classification of occupations (ISCO). Having this in mind, we suppose that the chosen variables are appropriate explanatory variables for country level research. Although we are aware that there are other cultural indicators that could be more related to tourism growth, those indicators are not included in our models since we are dealing with the country-level data. Therefore, including of those additional variables could be used in further research on regional level (NUTS 2, NUTS 3).
No.3
Generally, the appropriate and update review of the literature is not always precise. For example, it seems that the reference 7, a publication edited in 2012, reports data on the virtual access to museums and heritage sites during the COVID-19! Moreover, reference 21 does not take in account the international arrivals.
Thus, my second suggestion is: please, check the coherence of the references reported in the literature review.
Authors' response:
Thank you for your comments. We have corrected the reference 7 (new: it is refference 4, line 41) and text reffering to refference 21 (line 117) where we replaced the words “international arrival”s with “overnights” (reffering to the words „total nights slept“ used in the refference 21).
No. 4
As far as the tourism indicators concern, the choice of the international tourism receipts could be disputable as this indicator is based on surveys on samples of international tourists and it is not mentioned if it is reported in nominal or in real terms.
The fact that inflation has a positive and significant effect on the international tourism receipts has to be explained (perhaps, it could be simply due to the fact that tourism receipts are in nominal terms).
Authors' response:
Although international tourism receipt is an indicator which is based on surveys on samples of international tourists, it is one of the three commonly used variables for Tourism (for example it is one of two main indicators of tourism trends in UNWTO Tourism Highligts, etc.). To address your valuable comment on nominal and real terms data, we have adjusted the complete data base for inflation. Now our regressions use variables in real terms (the new results are similar to the results retrieved from the variables in nominal terms). In addition, the effects of inflation did not change when comparing the models in nominal and real terms. However, the inflation coefficient has slightly decreased, but inflation is still significant and positive.
No. 5
Nothing is mentioned about the potential role of the exchange rate in the period considered (2008-2018).
Authors' response:
Although we find this issue very important, we have omitted to explain in the paper our decision to not include the exchange rate in the models. Firstly, we have considered the problem of multicolinearity as explained by Quadri and Zheng (2010). They noticed that by using inflation and exchange rate in the same regression multicolinearity may arise and they indicate that inflation is not ideal indicator but that it safely tracks tourism and travel process. Additionally, they found that fluctuation of exchange rate does not affect international tourism demand in Italy. Moreover, Athari et al. (2020) found that the exchange rate has positive but not significant impact on tourism arrivals for two different development-level groups of OECD countries. On the other hand, they found that inflation is statistically significant and causes decline in number of tourists visiting the destinations. For 208 World economies Gan (2015) found that exchange rate is not always positively related to tourism demand, while relative prices are always significant with expected negative sign in the models.
In addition, our data cover EU 27 countries, and more than half of them are the members of EU monetary union, thus the ER does not reveal country specific characteristics. Therefore, we use the inflation as a better indicator of relevant control variable in our empirical model.
The relevant text on this issue is added to the revised paper, lines 208-223, and goes as follows:
“In the existing literature exchange rate is often considered as important determinant of tourism [41,49,59]. We decided to omit this variable for several reasons. Firstly, we have considered the problem of multicolinearity which can arise by including exchange rate and inflation in the same regression [60]. Additionally, they indicate that inflation securely tracks tourism and travel process while they found that exchange rate fluctuations do not affect international tourism demand in Italy. Moreover, [61] found that the exchange rate has positive but not significant impact on tourism arrivals for two groups of OECD countries. On the other hand, they found that inflation is statistically significant and causes decline in number of tourists visiting the destinations. For 208 World economies,[62] found that exchange rate is not always positively related to tourism demand, while relative prices are always significant with expected negative sign in the models. Finally, since our data cover EU 27 countries, where 19 of them are the members of EU monetary union, the exchange rates do not reveal country-specific characteristics. Therefore, the inflation is a better indicator of relevant control variable in our empirical model. INFL presents the change in the price level in a destination. Its rise affects negatively destination’s competitiveness and its share in the international tourism market [49]. Therefore, we expect negative relation between price and tourism development in our model.”
No. 6
The fact that inflation has a positive and significant effect on the international tourism receipts has to be explained (perhaps, it could be simply due to the fact that tourism receipts are in nominal terms). Large part of the empirical studies prefers to measure tourism flows in terms of overnights and stays because if we want to consider the trend of domestic and international tourism receipts we have to consider them in real terms and in a common currency. Moreover, I wonder whether the GDPPC too is considered in real terms.
Authors' response:
According to your useful comment, we decided to use all relevant variables in real terms and they are all in the same currency. Consequently, we have estimated regressions again. Results are very similar. Those estimations additionally confirm our previous results on the relationship between culture and tourism.
No. 7
As a minor suggestion, an English language revision is necessary. In sum, the paper is an empirical study on tourism and growth that could have some elements of novelty and scientific interest. However, the paper has to be improved and better focused. At the moment, the use (or more properly, the abuse) of the term “sustainable” can be only justified with the name and the interests of the journal where the paper is submitted.
Authors' response:
Thank you for your comments. We have revised the English language. Also, based on this and your previous valuable comments, the new version of the paper better addresses the issue of the term “sustainable”. For example, when explaining the empirical model we agree that it is tourism growth model and not sustainable tourism development model. Finally, we have also changed the words in the paper regarding sustainable tourism development.
Reviewer 2 Report
It is an interesting research. However, I have some observations:
1. some of these observations are linked to the use of GDP as a control variable and the claims regarding the relation between GDP and sustainable tourism development. Could it not be that tourism has a causal effect on GDP? I believe that more clarity is needed here. I noticed that you are referencing some other study, but it may not be enough.
2. Minor: Please review /reformulate the claim that your paper "the first to provide a broader research scope on complex phenomena of culture and sustainable tourism" (rows 144-145). This is a very broad and debatable statement. Moreover, even if we look at the exact design and focus of your research, such statements are difficult to prove. I am not aware of a very similar research and I deduct that neither are you, however the lack of evidence does not equal the evidence of the lack.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Please find enclosed the revised version of the paper The Role of UNESCO Cultural Heritage and Cultural Sector in Tourism Development: The Case of EU Countries, which my co-authors and I would like to resubmit for consideration by the special issue of the Sustainability Journal under title: A European Perspective on Cultural Heritage as a Driver for Sustainable Development and Regional Resilience.
first of all, we would like to thank you on our behalf, not only for your thorough reading of the paper, but especially for the insightful comments and suggestions. We found your suggestions and comments well-targeted and extremely helpful and, as a consequence, we have included most of them in the revised version of the paper. All changes in the new version of the document have been highlighted.
We feel that the resulting paper has benefited from all these comments and is, consequently, much stronger and more clearly focused.
No.1
Some of these observations are linked to the use of GDP as a control variable and the claims regarding the relation between GDP and sustainable tourism development. Could it not be that tourism has a causal effect on GDP? I believe that more clarity is needed here. I noticed that you are referencing some other study, but it may not be enough.
Authors' response:
We highly appreciate the reviewers comment and therefore we expand our paper by elaborating more accurately the tourism-growth link, as follows (lines: 86-92):
“The link between tourism and growth has been a subject of the large number of the existing empirical literature. This empirical literature reveals different aspects of the relation between tourism and economic growth, from the tourism – led growth hypothesis (TLG) (e.g.[24–30]), economic-driven tourism growth hypothesis (EDTG) [31–33] to bidirectional causality or no causal relationship at all (e.g. [28,29,34–36]). Although the existing literature about the tourism–growth causal link remains mixed, those studies generally provide evidence on positive relation between tourism and economic growth regardless the direction of the causality.”
In addition, due to the possible bidirectional relationship between tourism and growth (precisely, influence of tourism growth on GDP growth) we employ system GMM estimator to control possible problem of endogeneity. However, results of the Sargan test indicate that there is no problem of endogeneity in the specified models.
No.2
Minor: Please review /reformulate the claim that your paper "the first to provide a broader research scope on complex phenomena of culture and sustainable tourism" (rows 144-145). This is a very broad and debatable statement. Moreover, even if we look at the exact design and focus of your research, such statements are difficult to prove. I am not aware of a very similar research and I deduct that neither are you, however the lack of evidence does not equal the evidence of the lack.
Authors' response:
Thank you for this valuable comment. We have formulated the sentence differently. Lines 146-147:
“As a result, this paper provides deeper insight on complex phenomena of culture and tourism relationship”.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I am fine with the revised version.
No further comments.
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for addressing my observations. Best of luck!
