Naslov
Smart governance in historic urban destinations - evidence from Croatia

Autori
Petrić, Lidija ; Mandić, Ante

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Poglavlja u knjigama, znanstveni

Knjiga
A Research Agenda for Urban Tourism

Urednik/ci
Van der Borg, Jan

Izdavač
Edward Elgar Publishing

Grad
Cheltenham

Godina
2022

Raspon stranica
53-82

ISBN
9781789907391

Ključne riječi
smart governance ; historic cities ; urban destinations ; importance-performance analysis ; smart tourism

Sažetak
In this research we explore smart governance (SG) elements, strategies and outcomes using a sample of small cities located in two Croatian regions, coastal and continental. These differ from one another not only in terms of their history and administrative culture but also the intensity of their tourism development, significantly affecting the way the city is governed with regard to the main SG categories. Historic city status was chosen as a common denominator for the cities in the sample. Building on an extensive literature review, an extended version of the smart governance model inaugurated by Bolivar and Meijer (2016) was suggested, to encompass contextual factors (size – referring mostly to small cities ; location - associated with different administrative cultures ; tourism development intensity - measured by the set of intensity indicators ; the status of the historic city as a specific local condition) and end with some policy measure proposals. A mixed-method approach was employed to address these issues. Firstly, an importance-performance analysis was conducted to evaluate the cities' mayors or deputies' perception of each of the proposed smart governance categories. Subsequently, a qualitative analysis exploring the cities' strategic documents was conducted to determine progress on smart governance and their development orientation. The research results have demonstrated the existence of an importance-performance gap between smart governance categories, with a few of them proving to yield significant impact. The findings are discussed in the light of contextual factors. The conclusions facilitate further understanding of this phenomenon and shed light on the specifics of governance in historic urban destinations within a given context. The major limitation of this study is the relatively small sample (42 out of 94 historic cities) and its focus on just one country (Croatia). Nevertheless, the findings may be valuable in the sense that they broaden the understanding of smart governance in historic cities. Furthermore, implications may be derived from the results obtained for both researchers and practitioners. There is a lack of studies on smart governance taking into account specific contextual factors, and we hope this research may help fill that gap.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Ekonomija

POVEZANOST RADA