Exploring motivations behind the introduction of tourist accommodation taxes: The case of the Marche region in Italy

The accommodation tax is one of the most common forms of tourism taxation to tackle tourism-related negative externalities, usually administered at sub-national level by municipalities. Although widely applied, the accommodation tax is not unanimously adopted, which makes it particularly interesting to investigate what encourages municipalities to rely on it. By using random effects panel logit and probit regression models on a set of Italian municipalities, this paper contributes to the scant literature that explores the issue and shows differences from similar studies. Specifically, our findings suggest that the probability of introducing a tourist accommodation tax is related to the size and fiscal conditions of the municipality, occupancy of tourist accommodation establishments, and electoral disproportionality. Furthermore, as our results reveal that strategic interactions among municipalities within the same province play a role, the paper suggests to consider the accommodation tax as a strategic tool in competition among tourist destinations.