**1. Introduction**

The COVID-19 pandemic pushed markets to evaluate different tourism motivations far from the big and crowded destinations, looking more at small places where contact with nature and local communities is possible (Fernández et al. 2022). Therefore, islands are specific geographical places where local people and nature are often predominant and are considered tourist attractions by a more significant number of travellers and tourists (Ruggieri and Calò 2022). In contrast, islands are also regarded as fragile territories due to the limited resources and the negative impacts they can receive from an unplanned process (Briguglio and Kisanga 2004). Consequently, tourism can be considered a central activity because it easily attracts external economies and, at the same time, is also considered a potential risk for locals and the environment.

The attention to sustainability, particularly for islands, is very relevant in tourism development planning. Thus, new tourism supply models are needed to find an acceptable balance between tourism economies and limited resources.

Accordingly, socio-cultural factors are more requested from tourists, such as experiences and seeing unique cultures, histories, nature, and genuine authenticity. These market trends make tourism development plans for destinations which have built the tourism economy on quantitative rather than qualitative dimensions more difficult (Baggio and Sainaghi 2011). A significant problem for under-developed territories, such as low-income

**Citation:** Ruggieri, Giovanni, Marco Platania, and Julian Zarb. 2022. Island Development Model Specialisation: A Panel Data Analysis Comparing Evolutionary Tourism Model, Industrial to Community-Based (2010–2019). *Economies* 10: 208. https://doi.org/10.3390/ economies10090208

Academic Editors: Aleksander Panasiuk and Wadim Strielkowski

Received: 20 June 2022 Accepted: 25 August 2022 Published: 30 August 2022

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**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

islands per capita, is that economic benefits dominate social and environmental sustainability issues. Economic added value will not be a primary objective for tourism in the next decade, more so in light of the social and environmental factors that will improve and characterise tourism activity (Sofield 2003). In contemporary research on sustainability issues, it is more accurate to consider social, ecological, and economic components as the combination and interweaving of sustainability elements. Some authors argued the need for a common goal in land planning by finding the proper equilibrium between economic conditions, environmental protection, and the resident's needs (Nugraheni et al. 2020).

Consequently, the environment is often limited, instituting sea and natural reserves, SIC areas, sovra-national initiatives (UNESCO), and national land-use limitations (Zarb 2017). Regarding the social aspect of sustainability in the case of tourism in some places, there is a planned distance between tourist destinations and residents. The human dimension is less considered in sustainable tourism planning. It sometimes becomes relevant in the case of over-tourism or the possibility of adverse effects on the population (Kittinger et al. 2012). The new post-COVID-2019 trend looks at places as islands with a spontaneous and network-organised community based on tourism activities. This trend could be considered a new model for planning and managing different tourism processes by developing a more vital link between the host and visitor and maintaining a sustainability approach (Zarb 2019).

Due to the recent interest in island policies, the EU Commission needs to have some policy indicators for islands and the fragile territory where sustainability represents a pre-condition to keep the value and for new evolution.

This article will focus on islands' development models, addressing some aspects to compare the two different opposite paradigms. Firstly, tourism as an industry based on a quantitative approach has led to the deterioration of many destinations over the past fifty years, bringing about over-tourism, environmental damage, infrastructural overdevelopment, and social challenges, such as increased housing costs and costs of living. Secondly, the sustainable and responsible method for managing tourism is more inclusive and spontaneously indicated as community-based tourism, highlighting the gaps in managing tourism as a socio-cultural activity rather than a spontaneous and ignored local initiative.

The research questions are based on the development path of the tourism model adopted by EU islands and if there are specialisations in community-based or industrial tourism. Starting from those assumptions, the specific research questions are based on the following:

Rq1: The main dimensions of the industry-based tourism model (IBTM) and communitybased model (CBTM);

Rq2: Comparing islands in the last ten years which followed IBTM or CBTM;

Rq3: Tourism policy can favour islands in the adoption of sustainable tourism.

The article first analyses the literature regarding the tourism industry and communitybased tourism. The second step of the article shows data analysis that adopted a mixed methodology in gathering empirical and secondary data to analyse the situation of tourism in the last ten years and several island destinations. The main supply and demand data for EU islands analysed come from Eurostat and the Observatory of Tourism for Islands Economies (OTIE). After the data presentation, the third step of the article shows the selected critical variables, such as population, establishment types, occupation, and tourism demand, comparing island territories. The variables consider the evolutionary trend over ten years from 2010 to 2019. A factor analysis (FA) is applied to analyse the interrelationship within a group of variables and identify some factors believed to contain basic information about the observed structure. Finally, the article needs to demonstrate the existence of two different tourist development models for islands. Both paradigms have limitations and identify two different tourism evolutionary scenarios useful for the EU's future island tourism policies.
