Diversified Agritourism Services as a Driver of Job Creation and Employment Formalisation: Panel Evidence from the Regions of Uzbekistan

The study provides an econometric basis for the employment effects of diversified agritourism services in Uzbekistan and tests whether a target of 40,000 jobs – 24,000 newly created and 16,000 brought out of the shadow economy – is attainable through the development of agritourism destinations. A three-block model is estimated on official regional data for 14 territories: (1) a cross-regional log-log employment equation linking jobs in accommodation and food services to the number of persons accommodated (2024–2025, n = 28); (2) a two-way fixed-effects dynamic panel of the employment intensity of sectoral output (2018–2025, n = 112); and (3) a pooled regression of the shadow-economy share in services on the density of formal accommodation capacity (2023–2025, n = 42). The tourism-demand elasticity of sectoral employment equals 0.539 (p < 0.001; 95% CI 0.379–0.699), the short- and long-run output elasticities of employment equal 0.069 and 0.220, and a one-log-unit increase in formal capacity density lowers the shadow share in services by 3.78 percentage points (p = 0.029). All models pass tests for heteroscedasticity, functional form, normality, multicollinearity and influential observations, or are estimated with robust (cluster, Driscoll–Kraay) standard errors where tests so require. Simulations show that a 7.5% increase in persons accommodated generated by diversified agritourism destinations by 2030 yields about 23,800 new jobs, and a 1.85-fold rise in formal capacity density brings about 16,000 jobs out of the shadow economy, jointly reaching the 40,000-job benchmark.