Effects of Rural Tourism on Demographic Evolution in Rural Municipalities in Spain

After more than 30 years of EU co-financed investments in rural tourism, few studies have assessed the effects and, to a lesser extent, the impact, of this sector on demographic development at local level. For this reason, this paper analyses, on the basis of two multiple linear regressions, one from the demand side and the other from the supply side, whether the sector has contributed to slowing down the depopulation process happened in many rural municipalities in Spain. The results show that from the demand side the effect is practically nonexistent, although the result could be conditioned by the data quality. From the supply side, municipalities with a significant provision of tourism resources (and, presumably, many of them, converted into effective tourism products) to diversify tourism have had a better demographic evolution. Together with rural tourism, other factors such as employment, the size of the municipality or climatic conditions have also influenced the demographic evolution of these municipalities.