Ecomometric Analysis of the Determinants of Inbound Tourism in Russia

The purpose of this paper was to analyze the influence of political factors of departure countries on the level of inbound tourism in Russia. The data included values for tourist inflow from 127 countries for 2016-2018, as well as a set of dependent and control variables about the social, political, cultural, and climatic factors of departure countries. Such political factors as anti-Russian sanctions, visa restrictions on entry into the Russian Federation, the terrorism index and press freedom index of departure countries were selected as independent variables. As a result of the econometric model with fixed effects (FE), it was found that only anti-Russian trade restrictions have a significant negative impact on the level of inbound tourism from a particular country. It is suggested that political relations, as a result, mass information flows affect the attitude of the inhabitants of a particular country to Russia. As a consequence, it negatively affects the desire of residents to visit Russia as a tourist destination.