Evaluation of environmentally conscious tourism industry: Case of Croatian counties

Tourism industry is very important in Croatia, due to its contribution to employment and GDP. In the last couple of years, there is an ongoing debate on how to further develop this sector of the economy, its supply and opportunities in order to fully utilize its potential. On the other side, discussions on sustainable business in general and sustainable tourism are getting louder every year. The purpose of this study was empirically evaluate the efficiency of environmentally conscious tourism industry of 21 Croatian counties over the period 2011-2015 by using Data Envelopment Analysis methodology. This is the first research of this kind in Croatia, and Balkan region as well; where environmental and economic features are observed in evaluating tourism industry. Static models, as well as window analysis were employed in order to evaluate economic and environmental features of tourism. On average, the majority of the counties had an increase of efficiency scores over time. This means that combination of waste management with growth of tourist arrivals has, on average, improved over the observed period. Finally, some recommendations of improvements are given based upon the results for the most inefficient counties, which had problems with waste management in the past