Tourism Function Differentiation and Selected Economic Indicators of Rural Municipalities in Poland

It is widely recognised that rural tourism influences the socio-economic structure of rural areas. Less attention, however, has been given to the reverse relationship—namely, how the economic conditions of rural municipalities shape the level and diversity of their tourism functions. This publication represents an effort to enrich research in this area. The study aimed to identify the relationships between selected economic indicators of rural areas and the level of their tourism function. The study’s spatial scope covered 1498 rural municipalities in Poland. The temporal scope encompassed the years 2018–2023, which were divided into three sub-periods: 2018–2019, 2020–2021, and 2022–2023. To achieve the research objective, the following methods were applied: the Zero Unitarisation Method, correlation analysis, and linear mixed-effects models. The constructed synthetic tourism function index enabled distinguishing between rural areas with high and low tourism attractiveness. The analysed rural municipalities exhibited considerable variation in the constructed index. The correlation analysis across four groups of rural areas, classified by the level of the tourism function index and selected economic indicators, revealed only weak to moderate relationships in the group of rural municipalities with a high level of tourism attractiveness (group 1). No such relationships were identified in the remaining groups of rural areas. The mixed-effects model further demonstrated that, among the six analysed economic indicators, the entrepreneurship rate and the unemployment rate had statistically significant effects on the tourism function index value. Group affiliation and the time factor exerted a strong and unambiguous influence on the dependent variable.