Tourism development in the Dominican Republic: An examination of the economic impact to coastal households

Abstract

Coastal tourism projects are promoted in the Dominican Republic as national-level economic development initiatives that will create jobs for local residents, subsequently benefiting the households in these communities. However, the economic benefits of tourism can be severely weakened as a result of the neoliberal economic policies that guide such projects. Like other economically developing countries—particularly small island nations—the Dominican Republic embraced neoliberal policies that have ultimately reshaped the country’s economic, political, cultural, and physical landscape. As a result, transnational companies, foreign investors, and large-scale enclave tourism projects are the dominant form of tourism development in the Dominican Republic. Though companies’ revenue and profit data are not available for analysis of economic leakage, households can be investigated to understand the level of economic benefits obtained by residents of the local communities. Toward this end, 360 household surveys were collected to examine household income and material assets across 12 coastal communities in three regions of the Dominican Republic. Because of the noted differences in previous development literature, gender of the head of households and whether the household was dependent on income from tourism employment were compared across these measures after adjusting for regional differences. Results indicate that the gender of the head of the household and tourism dependency positively predicted household income, while only gender of the head of the household predicted material assets.