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Abstract
Cross-border cooperations have been usually approached from developing trade agreements
between international regions to upgrade their socioeconomic conditions and promote
international tourism flows in territories. However, few attention has paid to the role that
touristic companies play in underprivileged territories highly dependent on tourism. Through
the theory of social exchange theoretical implications can be drawn from those territories can
be compared to developed regions to understand what role tourism flows play in the
reciprocal attitude between touristic companies and visitors. Political implications force
tourist authorities to involve companies in promoting their regional tourism resources
through detailed in participatory tourism programs. For this, the opinion of companies
strongly related to the tourism generated by the Parque Natural Tajo Internacional on both
sides of the border between Spain and Portugal have participated in the research to develop
tourism on both sides of the border. To collect the data, 126 interviews were carried out with
companies among the 53 Spanish and Portuguese companies that participated in the research
between January to June, 2022. For data tabulation, version 3.26 of SmartPLS was used. The
study concludes that social exchange policies that bring companies and residents closer
together favour socioeconomic development in territories that have natural resources and are
economically disadvantaged.
Keywords: underprivileged territories; social exchange; tourism; companies; tourists.
1. Introduction
The management of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis has provided exemplary lessons regarding
the application of sustainable models of governance to overcome threatened tourist
destinations (Robina et al., 2022). The boom in sustainable tourism in recent years has
generated wealth around environmentally protected areas (UNWTO, 2021). Protected areas are
managed for multiple, often competing, goals including biodiversity conservation, community
livelihoods, and tourism (Nyaupane, et al., 2022). However, interactions between humans and
nature, between stakeholders, and between environmental elements make it complex and
variable where the impacts of tourism management become an essential management variable
(Rodríguez-Pose, 2020; Zhan et al., 2022; Martín-Delgado et al., 2020).
This is the case of the International Tagus Natural Park, which was named as such in Decree
187/2005, of July 26, called the Spanish Natural Resources Management Plan.
A general tourism system alone is not a viable enough solution to make rural industries more
attractive to businesses and the visiting community (Sánchez-Oro, et al., 2021, 2021a). It is the
feedback from guests that is necessary to involve companies in promoting their own tourism
resources (Lee, 2011; Robina-Ramírez et al., 2022; Martín-Delgado et al., 2020). This connection
allows companies to participate in the tourism activities detailed in participatory tourism
programs (Leal-Solís, & Robina-Ramírez, 2022; Nepal, 2000). Based on these interactive tourism
methods, a distinctive pilot project has recently emerged in two Spanish tourist offices in the
Parque Natural Tajo Internacional. Through the dissemination of tourist proposals, the tourist
offices of Alcántara and Brozas have become the centre of participatory dynamics since April
2019. Since the pilot project began, two surveys have been organized. They measured the
economic role played by tourism and social relations in these impoverished and subsidized
towns. Such an initiative is well aligned with tourism business and social exchange, which is
vital to ensure and foster the stability of tourist visits to the territory (Ashworth and Goodall,
1988).
To improve the social and economic conditions of impoverished regions, the relation between
companies and tourists has been widely discussed from the perspective of companies and
tourists (Robina-Ramírez et al., 2022b; Qu et al., 2022). However, little attention has been paid
to the companies’ perspective in developing territories (Stylidis and Terzidou, 2014). The
company–tourist interaction is analysed in this work from the social perspective based on
socioeconomic strategies linked to the tourist destination (Elvekrok et al., 2022).
Based on the presentation of variables extracted from the literature and validated by the
companies, this investigation studies the degree of contribution of the theory of social
exchange to the socioeconomic growth of both the companies and the inhabitants of the
territory under study. To originally ascertain the level of tourism impact on providing
supplemented incomes from tourism on companies, a preliminary study was carried out on 18
private companies as well as in 11 Spanish and 8 Portuguese municipalities on both sides of
the park (see Table 1).
