Evaluation of Economic Impacts of Tourism in Mountainous Region

Abstract

The principal change in recent years has been a decline of the primary industries and a growth of the service industries in the mountainous region. Especially, a growth of the tourism industries has been major components for such economic restructuring. This paper examines the economic impacts of tourism on a mountainous region in Nara Prefecture by Input-Output evaluation. The Generation of Regional Input-Output Tables technique is applied to estimate Input-Output table for the region. The results are following. The first is that economic impacts are mainly through the direct effect, inconsequentially through the indirect effect. Because the industries in the region are small scale and poor diversity, backward linkages of the tourism industries with the rest of the industries are weak. The second is that the Japanese guesthouse (providing bed and meals in private house) staying style tourism creates greater income and employment than other style tourism (hotel staying, camping, one-day trip). Because the guesthouse business have stronger backward linkages, and yield more value-added.