Search results

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of wine tourism on rural destination development. Consequently, this study attempts to develop contemporary insights on this under-researched area such as residents’ perceptions of wine tourism and its impact on the rural destination development.

In this study, the authors used a structured survey questionnaire from a random sample of 318 respondents based on the Fruška Gora Mountain in Serbia. Research also used structural equational modeling for empirical econometric testing in this data sample. This technique is appropriate for multivariate analysis.

Personal resident benefit associated with wineries is positively related to resident perceived economic impact (H1) R²=0.624; socio-cultural impact (H2) R²=0.685 and environmental impact (H3) R²=0.716 of wineries on local communities. Looking at the path diagram, the authors concluded that personal resident benefit associated with wineries is strongly related to resident perceived impact of wineries on local communities as regression weights are higher. Other findings relate those residents’ positive perceptions of wine tourism to increases in sales revenue, environmental protection, intrapersonal and interpersonal communication.

The positive attitude of the local population is an essential link of development. Such understanding of residents’ perceptions optimizes destination management in the future and, more importantly, local sustainable development. This has high policy implications.

The present study contributes to the scientific circles by connecting perception research with wine tourism.

The starting premise of this study is that women's empowerment is the goal for self-realization and that the support that comes from local tourism stakeholders represents an adequate base. In many rural areas, women have established self-help groups (SHGs), which facilitate the interaction with a wide range of stakeholders. The objective of this paper is to investigate the effects of SHGs on female entrepreneurship and self-employment in tourism.

To examine the research question, this study adopted a quantitative research that included a sample of 513 women in a less-advanced rural area in Serbia. For the data analysis, the generalized linear regression model (GLM) was used.

According to the results, self-employment is the leading goal of women's empowerment.

The main limitation in the research and the authors’ suggestion for future research is to increase the sample size of female respondents, so examination of their attitudes and role in the travel business in their local settings might reach higher significance. The second issue that the authors would like to point out is a highly local character of our study, so the future research should involve other rural areas in the country and from abroad (e.g. similar undeveloped countryside with noticeable, active women's role in local entrepreneurship).

The most important practical implications of this paper are twofold: (1) the results of the research have shown that the tourist potential of rural areas can be enhanced through local tourism stakeholders' support; (2) women without professional interest or jobs in rural areas, especially in the areas where the population is traditionally dominated by men (husband/brother/father), have a chance to earn and to be economically more independent. This research can affect future studies to investigate other aspects of empowerment depending on the difference of regions, from one side, and also alternative opportunities for tourism and local development in less-advanced rural areas, from another side.

The study analyzes the tourism potential of the rural areas (which are less advanced and mostly very poor in developing countries, such as Serbia). In this case, there are opportunities to increase employment, social inclusion of women, development of new tourism strategies, implementation of destination marketing, etc. Moreover, it contributes to future research in the field of stakeholders in tourism strategies.