Impact evaluation with process tracing: explaining causal processes in an EU-interreg sustainable tourism intervention
本文提出将过程追踪法用于评估复杂旅游干预的因果机制，并以欧盟跨区域可持续旅游项目EXPERIENCE为例展示该方法，帮助研究者理解干预在地方情境中的运作方式。
Drawing from the field of complex evaluations we discuss a novel application of process tracing for the evaluation of complex tourism interventions. We argue that to better evidence impact of tourism interventions and facilitate policy transfer we ought to adopt approaches to evaluation that allow us to deepen our understanding of causal mechanisms at play in an intervention. We adopt process tracing as a qualitative, theory-based evaluation method to make within-case causal inferences about impact. To showcase the method, we apply it to evaluate the outcomes of a real-world EU-Interreg sustainable tourism intervention called “EXPERIENCE,” implemented across six pilot regions across France and England. We argue that deepening our understanding of how interventions work in a local context is necessary for the design and transferability of future interventions across similar contexts.