UNESCO sites and performance trend of Italian regional tourism destinations

Abstract

This article analyzes the role of United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) sites on the enhancement of tourism destinations (TDs) performance, taking the Italian regions over the period 1995–2010 as a case study. Specifically, we aim at studying the effect of the inscription in the World Heritage List (WHL) upon the dynamics of the efficiency of the Italian regions as TDs. We use a two-stage data envelopment analysis window analysis, to detect efficiency trends and resort to both semiparametric pooled-truncated and panel data estimators to evaluate the determinants of the efficiency changes in TDs over time. Moreover, we test for the presence of spatial dependence in the efficiency of TDs. The results reveal that the WHL does not play a significant role in enhancing technical efficiency of TDs. These empirical findings are robust to alternative estimators and model specifications. Furthermore, the spatial analysis does not reveal significant spillover effects in the efficiency of TDs.