INTERREGIONAL DISPARITIES OF THE COLLABORATIVE ECONOMY IN ROMANIA. THE CASE OF ACCOMMODATION SERVICES

The growing collaborative economy supports sustainable economic development and the circular economy. It aims to reduce over-consumption of resources and ensure efficient use of idle resources. The collaborative economy has emerged strongly in the tourism sector through shared tourism services, pioneered by Airbnb. This paper focuses on the analysis of inter-regional disparities of the collaborative economy in Romanian tourism. To this end, Gini concentration curves have been plotted and Gini concentration indices have been calculated for the three hierarchical levels of territorial units: NUTS1, NUTS2, NUTS3. The indicators analyzed were the number of stays for total tourists and the number of overnight stays for total tourists. As expected, the results showed a higher degree of concentration at NUTS3 level (higher disparity) and a lower degree of concentration at NUTS1 level (lower disparity). As a result of these calculations, the main regional poles were identified for NUTS1 level (macro-regions One and Four) and for NUTS2 level (Centre and South-West Oltenia regions). Surprisingly, the Bucharest-Ilfov region, the most economically developed region in Romania, failed to outperform the other regions over the whole period analyzed. The overall trend of inter-regional disparities was downward.