INEQUALITIES AND TOURISM CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOUR: A MIXTURE MODEL ANALYSIS

Abstract

The criticism of income as a measure of well-being and trends in living standards is well known and recently scholars have been involved in defining measures to better assess material well-being and differences in living standards. Recent evidence shows that individuals improve their well-being significantly if they are able to spend on higher-order goods and services like tourism and leisure activities. In the light of that, our study proposes to explore differences in living standards in Italy by analysing the distribution of tourism expenditure. For this aim, Mixtures of Regression Models were used in order to investigate whether there is an unobserved heterogeneity in tourism consumption by identifying the presence of groups of families with similar tourism consumption behaviour as function of some socio-demographic and economic factors. The analysis shows that tourism has not become part of the lifestyle of Italians yet.