An Analysis of Overtourism Policies in Cities by Combining Quantitative and Qualitative Criteria

Abstract

Overtourism has emerged as a global concern because of its worldwide negative impacts on society, culture, nature, and the environment. Local authorities have been implementing policies to solve the negative consequences to some extent. However, links between overtourism and the policy have rarely been investigated. This study categorised the policies into types and levels based on qualitative information and ranked overtourism as ordinal with quantitative information. By investigating the data for selected cities, the correlation between policy strictness and overtourism degree was analysed. The findings indicate that the combination of quantitative and qualitative indicators might be a useful tool to compare overtourism degrees on a relative basis. Some typical types of reactions of destinations to the overtourism problem, which might be a determinant of destination tourism development, were found.