Rural tourism and inclusive local development in Goa, India: A multidimensional assessment of economic and social impacts

Bandodcar, Apurva Sweeten; Naik, Jyoti Sunil; Rodrigues E Melo, Filipe

doi:10.22059/jcountst.2026.412632.1466

Rural tourism and inclusive local development in Goa, India: A multidimensional assessment of economic and social impacts

Document Type : Original

Authors

Apurva Sweeten Bandodcar ¹

Jyoti Sunil Naik ²

Filipe Rodrigues e Melo ³

¹ Department of Commerce, GVM's Gopal Govind Poy Raiturcar College of Commerce and Economics, Ponda, Goa, India.

² Goa Business School, Goa University, Taleigao, Goa, India.

³ St. Xavier’s College, Mapusa, Goa, India.

10.22059/jcountst.2026.412632.1466

Abstract

This paper evaluates economic and social impacts of tourism on rural development across Goa’s 12 sub-district administrative units (talukas) using a revised Rural Tourism Development Index (RTDI). Using FY 2023-24 official data, it constructs composite scores across economic contribution, market diversification, rural orientation, and social inclusion, and corrects a methodological error in the rural orientation proxy that misclassified inland talukas in earlier applications. The study measures the coastal-inland development gap and assesses whether aggregate state-level tourism growth corresponds to inclusive local outcomes. A multi-source dataset is assembled from seven official government sources including DPSE Goa Statistical Handbook 2023-24 (Table 77), ISED-2025, India Tourism Data Compendium 2025, and MoSPI PLFS 2017-2025. The RTDI rural orientation dimension is re-specified using inverse tourism density derived from Census 2011 area data, replacing a median-cutoff proxy that produced erroneous zero scores for rural talukas. OLS regression with full diagnostic reporting and three OECD-compliant weight schemes with Kendall tau rank concordance are applied. PCA identifies structural axes of inter-taluka variance. Under the equal-weight scheme (W1), Bardez ranks first (RTDI= 0.584) through its dominant Economic Score (1.000). Sanguem (rank 5, RTDI= 0.458) and Sattari (rank 6, RTDI= 0.431) lead on diversification and rural orientation respectively. Kendall tau between W1 and the rural-dominant scheme W3 is -0.061 (P= 0.841), confirming that equal-weight and rural-priority rankings are uncorrelated. Log tourist volume is significantly associated with RTDI (b= 0.040, P= 0.010, R-squared= 0.503). PCA identifies PC1 (66.0% of variance) as the dominant coastal-rural development axis. This study provides the first taluka-level multidimensional rural tourism impact assessment for Goa, corrects a previously unidentified RTDI specification error with direct policy consequences, and demonstrates that aggregate state statistics systematically obscure the coastal-inland development duality that determines whether tourism generates inclusive rural outcomes.

Keywords

coastal-hinterland

Goa talukas

inclusive development

Kendall tau

OECD sensitivity analysis

PCA

RTDI composite index

rural tourism

tourism density

Subjects

Economics

حوزة موضوعی: هند

Scope: India

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