Leveraging experimental designs in tourism economics research

Experimental research represents a significant yet underutilized methodological approach in tourism economics, offering robust tools designed to uncover causal relationships and isolate independent variable effects. Traditional approaches tend to rely on observational, administrative, and survey-based data collection, which limits the ability to advance the understanding of causality in phenomena within the field of tourism economics, such as stakeholder decision-making. This conceptual piece synthesizes critical insights from economics to propose a novel framework for integrating experimental methods designed to enhance data richness and methodological rigor in tourism economics. This manuscript contributes a dual-pathway roadmap advances discourse on experimental design’s efficacy in the field. This conceptual piece provides a platform for future research to deepen theoretical contributions and offers practical guidelines for researchers seeking to advance discourse through the implementation of experimental designs in tourism economics research.