Evaluating tourism externalities in destinations: the case of Italy

The present work analyzes tourism externalities in Italy, fifth country in the world and third in Europe for international arrivals (UNWTO, 2014).The thesis in divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 analyzes the theory of externalities and provides some examples of tourism externalities. Chapter 2 shows the main research questions, motivations and three cases study. In the last section the main reasons are illustrated for analyzing the Italian case as suitable for the purpose of the present work. Chapter 3 focuses on the relationship between tourism and crime at Italian provincial level. Chapter 4 describes the link between tourist sector and house prices in Italian provincial capitals. Chapter 5 is devoted to the application of a method for policy evaluation on the impact of tourist taxation on tourist flows. It is explored its distortive effect on tourist demand at municipality level. The case under analysis is Villasimius, Sardinian tourist destination. To do this the recent methodology ofSynthetic Controlis used.This study provides some evidence that a positive and significant link between crime and tourism exists. Furthermore, the empirical analysis performed in Chapter 4 by using the Generalized Method of Moment (GMM), highlights that property prices in Italian cities can be affected by tourism activity. Finally, after evaluating the introduction of tourism taxation, results demonstrate first hints about the non-negative taxation effect on tourist flows.