3.1. Study Area
As a member of the European Union, Croatia is included in the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS). NUTS regions in Croatia, or the National Classification of Territorial Units for Statistics of the Croatian Bureau of Statistics, refer to the territorial division of Croatia for statistical purposes, according to the European Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS-fr.: Nomenclature des unites territoriales statistiques).
Pursuant to Article 43 of the Official Statistics Act [
45] the Croatian Bureau of Statistics (CBS) determines the national classification of territorial units for statistics [
46]. In August 2012, the European Commission accepted the proposed division of the Republic of Croatia into two NUTS 2 regions, namely Continental Croatia and Adriatic Croatia. The use of the new classification for the implementation of Cohesion Policy started when Croatia joined the EU, i.e., on 1 July 2013, what is shown in
Figure 1.
Continental Croatia covers an area with 2.96 million inhabitants and has a GDP per capita at 64.1% of the EU average. The area covered by Adriatic Croatia has 1.47 million inhabitants and a GDP per capita at 62.1% of the EU average. This shows that both regions belong to the so-called less-developed regions, whose GDP per capita is lower than 75% of the EU average [
47]. Continental Croatia includes fourteen continental counties, while the Adriatic region includes seven coastal counties. In order to better recognize the development potential of both regions, activities with comparative advantages, and natural resources, the following part of the paper analyzes both regions’ potentials that contribute to tourism and economic power.
The coastal part of Croatia (Adriatic Croatia) is the area comprising the islands, the coast and the sub-Mediterranean hinterland from Cape Savudrija in the north to Prevlaka in the south. The total length of the Croatian coast is 5790 km
2, due to its highly indented coastline. With a 10.2 indentation coefficient, Croatia has the second most indented coastline in Europe (after Norway). The Croatian part of the Adriatic has 1185 islands, rocks and ridges [
48]. The area of the Adriatic tourist macro-region has a Mediterranean climate, so precipitation (rain) is more frequent in winter months, whereas summers are mostly dry and clear. Humidity is relatively low, the result of the constant circulation of air. The winter is marked by the winds bora and sirocco, and the summer months mainly by mistral, which refreshes, reduces sultriness and purifies the atmosphere. The waves do not exceed two meters in the winter, and about half a meter in the summer [
49]. The specificity of the reef, plant and animal life and other characteristics of particular areas led to the creation of five specific environmental areas, i.e., the national parks Mljet, Kornati, Brijuni, Paklenica on Velebit and Krka Waterfalls and several nature parks and reserves that attract a significant number of tourists or transit visitors [
50]. Due to its abovementioned characteristics, natural environment and highly attractive anthropogenic assets, this region is the most important tourist destination in Croatia. There are particularly good conditions for swimming, water skiing, windsurfing, diving, water polo, navigation and sailing on various types of vessels and, in winter months, there are natural conditions for the development of health tourism with specific forms of sports and recreational activities. Most beaches are suitable for activities such as aerobics and water exercise, while a significant part of the coast is also suitable for the construction of water parks [
51]. The importance of this region is evidenced by tourism performance in the period 2007–2016 (
Table 1).
As can be seen in
Table 1, in the period 2008–2016 the number of arrivals and the number of overnight stays grew at an average annual rate of 3.9%. The number of domestic overnight stays increased at an average annual rate of 3.5%, while the number of nights spent by foreign tourists showed a positive annual growth rate of 4.3%.
Figure 2 shows climate parameters in the coastal area in the period 1977–2014, which are been used in regression model.
The continental part of Croatia consists of the mountainous regions of Lika and Gorski Kotar and the Pannonian and Peripannonian part that includes the city of Zagreb, Hrvatsko Zagorje and lowland eastern Croatia. The mountainous region stretches from the border to Slovenia in the west to the Bosnia-Herzegovina border in the southeast, covering 7913 km
2 or about 14% of the total Croatian territory, with about 144,000 inhabitants or about 3% of the total Croatian population [
52]. The main reason for the depopulation of this region is the underdeveloped economy. One of the comparative advantages of the mountainous area is certainly its proximity to the sea, creating an opportunity for developing various forms and types of tourism (excursion, transit, combined, etc.). The climate is typically continental with fresh summers, cold winters and relatively high precipitation (snow). Due to the proximity to the Mediterranean and the mixing of the continental and Mediterranean climates, snow mostly remains on the ground for a relatively short time, which is one of the main constraints for the development of winter tourism. Gorski Kotar has tourism resources that are a good basis for hunting and fishing tourism, health tourism, various winter sports, and excursions, recreational and transit tourism [
52]. The climate in Gorski Kotar is continental, with very short and fresh summers and long and sharp winters with abundant snow. Lika has the same or similar environmental characteristics, but what makes it so special is the specificity of its karstic composition and geomorphological forms. The Panonian-peripannonian area has a surface of 30,776 km
2 or 54.4% of Croatian territory, with about 3.17 million inhabitants or 66.4% of the total [
47]. Although its natural tourism resources are relatively modest, this area has certain comparative advantages in the development of sports and recreational activities and tourism development in general, since it includes the largest Croatian cities of multi-functional significance with a great wealth of highly attractive anthropogenic tourism resources and the potential for the development of excursion or business tourism (Zagreb, Varaždin and Osijek). City tourism and congress tourism is independent of weather. Urban tourists are more weather resilient, as neither actual nor perceived weather affects behavior to any great extent [
53].
When Croatian tourism performance in the continental part is compared with that of the coastal area, it is evident that the former has great potential for increasing the number of arrivals and overnight stays, even more so because air temperature on the coast is rising and tourists want to spend their time in comfortable climate conditions.
Table 2 shows tourism performance in the continental area in the period 2007–2016.
An analysis of the above data indicates that there is great potential for tourism development in the continental part of Croatia, which is further evidenced by the average annual growth rate of foreign tourist overnight stays of 7.1%. As this paper analyzes climate parameters and proves the hypothesis that air temperature has a strong influence on the number of overnight stays, it is obvious that with further temperature rise and climate change, tourists will start seeking climatically more comfortable parts of Croatia, not just coastal areas. The next figure illustrates trends in climate parameters of the continental part of Croatia in the period 1977–2014.
In this paper summer period refers to the period from May to September, and the winter period from October to April. This is also the official division of tourist season in the Republic of Croatia [
17].
Figure 3 shows climate parameters in the continental area in the period 1977-2014, which are been used in regression model.
3.2. Study Materials and Methods
The analyzed data cover the period from 1977 to 2014. In this model, we used quarterly average data for all the below-mentioned climate variables in the period from 1977 to 2014. For the coastal part of Croatia, we used quarterly averages of all climate variables in meteorological stations in the towns of Rijeka, Zadar, Split and Dubrovnik. For continental Croatia we used quarterly averages of all climate variables in meteorological stations in Zagreb, Osijek, Knin and Gospić. Data on climate parameters were obtained from the Croatian National Meteorological and Hydrological Service, while the data relating to the number of tourist overnight stays were obtained from the Croatian Bureau of Statistics. For the purposes of the research, the following variables (i.e., logarithms of their values) were used:
Logarithm of the number of overnight stays, as a dependent variable, and
the following climate parameters, as independent variables:
temperature,
humidity,
precipitation,
number of sunny days.
In order to establish the correlation of the observed elements, data analysis was performed for coastal Croatia and continental Croatia. The statistical analyses were conducted using the STATA 12.0 program package (StataCorp, LLC, USA), and apart from the basic descriptive statistics methodology, correlation and regression analyses were used. The correlation analysis uses the Pearson coefficient of correlation. In the regression analysis, we used a multivariate model with first difference specification and OLS estimation, in which past period of the dependent variable was also included. Seasonality was controlled by using quarterly dummy variable. In all tests, the statistical significance is p = 0.05. The analyses for coastal and continental Croatia were made separately.