Agritourism as a Source of Income: The Example of Farms from France, Poland, Romania and Spain
Purpose: The main objective of this article is to compare the official revenues from agritourism for farms of chosen European countries. It answers the following questions: What revenues from agritourism do farms from countries with the highest tourist traffic (France and Spain) have, and what from countries with the highest potential for the development of agritourism (Poland and Romania)? How does the size of the farm (measured by economic size) affect the revenues from agritourism? What is the relationship between French, Polish, Romanian and Spanish agritourism revenues and other production, economic and financial categories, and do the results for these four countries differ? Design/Methodology/Approach: The research is based on data from the FADN (RICA) database. All available data from the years 2004-2022 were used. The panel data models were estimated. Findings: Revenues from agritourism are not high according to official data, but depend on the economic size of the farm. Panel regression results indicate difficulties in identifying direct economic determinants of agritourism revenues. Romania's results are too low to be examined. The results of France and Spain are ambiguous, and the results of Poland indicate the importance of labour inputs and taxes. The weakness of the obtained models suggests that revenues from agritourism in farms depend on factors outside the agricultural economy. Also their financial situation in this study is not of great importance, but rather on farms’ involvement in agricultural production. Practical Implications: The official revenues from agritourism is not a significant source of income for farms in the European Union. The article proves that without the obligation to register tourist traffic in the countryside and without the obligation to keep accounts on farms, they will not admit to receiving additional revenues from, for example, agritourism. Originality/Value: The article makes several significant contributions to the literature on agritourism, especially in the context of France, Poland, Romania and Spain. We compare two countries with high tourist traffic and significant agriculture in the EU (France and Spain) with two countries with a large labour stock and a large number of smallholder farms (Poland and Romania). We have shown that in every country there is an underestimation of revenues from agritourism, and they depend not only on the financial condition of the farm, but also on non-model factors.