Regional implications of the Italian inner areas strategy

The need to evaluate the impact of public policies on tourism has become increasingly important over time (Aguinis et al., 2023). Tourism is a direct target of policies and frequently serves to achieve broader objectives, including economic and social cohesion, environmental sustainability, and regional development (Joppe, 2018). This approach is evident, for example, in the European Union’s Cohesion Policy, where tourism is included across different areas of intervention, even though it is not an explicit priority. However, measuring the effectiveness of tourism policies can prove challenging, especially at the local level, where adequate data and rigorous evaluation approaches are often lacking (Brandano & Crociata, 2023). The extant literature predominantly focuses on regional analyses (Deng et al., 2019) or uses descriptive methodologies, neglecting to estimate robust causal effects.