Forecasting the Tourist Impact Based on Gini Index : Flexible Development Policies

This study, as a synthesis of past research, demonstrates that the use of the well-known methodological "Gini coefficient index" measured income inequalities, should support a new forecasting form of tourist impact, led - under conditions - to new flexible development policies, especially in small rural areas. Indeed, after a period when distributional issues received little scientific attention, income inequality has resurfaced in the last two decades, concerning across development, or social sciences and their "forecasting policies" in accordance to Moran (2003). The major objective of this article is to create "paths" between income inequality measurement (through Gini coefficient estimation) and forecasting the tourist impact in two different tourist areas. Next step is to use the results of these "paths" to formulate "flexible" development policies, taking into account these touirst impact forecasts, Finally, these results are applied in real local development conditions, in two different level Greek tourism areas (S-W Peloponnesus and Pilion of Thessaly), which are the most popular tourist destinations in Greece