Abstract
Agritourism has grown rapidly in many countries worldwide. However, for all this success, little is known about the concrete implementation, the actual extent, and the effectiveness of various public, in particular financial, agritourism support measures generally aimed at keeping up farming and promoting agritourism. Hence, the objective of this study is to provide an overview and an international comparison of agritourism policies, regulations, and support schemes. To this purpose, specific political, legal, financial, and promotional instruments for agritourism have been investigated. The focus is on three countries with a strong agritourism sector but different socio-cultural characteristics: Italy, the USA, and South Africa. The analysis of these case study areas is motivated by confronting agritourism from different continents with a diverging status of development as well as history. Italy and the USA are two countries with a well-established and successful agritourism sector, however, based on very different framework conditions resulting in specific development paths and various supportive driving factors. South Africa has been included as a representative case study of a developing country where agritourism companies are growing rapidly by the support of a very active sector association. By assessing commonalities and differences in public and private support backgrounds in three different continents, the study represents the first attempt to improve the understanding of the influencing national and regional framework conditions for agritourism development.