Training Tourism Micro-Entrepreneurs in Panama for Sustainability and Poverty Reduction

This proposal estimates the causal impact of business training for microentrepreneurs in Panama's tourism sector using a randomized controlled trial involving 200 micro-entrepreneurs located in under-marketed indigenous tourist sites which are also impacted by migration from other Latin American countries. The trial examines impacts on entrepreneur-level outcomes, including the adoption of sustainable business practices, employment, and profits, as well as site-level outcomes, such as employment spillovers to other economic sectors, tourist arrival rates, nature conservation, and cultural heritage preservation. Training consists of (1) in-person workshops for targeted community leaders in the participating sites, covering key themes like customer service, product design, site tours and personal safety, first aid, marketing, ecosystem awareness, and conservation, and (2) linkages to Panama’s the broader network of tour operators, including a national tours website. A collaboration agreement between the investigators and Panama’s Foundation for Sustainable Tourism, or Fundación Panameña de Turismo Sostenible (APTSO), enables the implementation of the proposal. APTSO will fund and implement the training program and handle all institutional relationships, while investigators will fund the trial’s baseline and follow-up surveys and write an independent academic paper with the results, publishable in a top field journal in development economics. The funds requested from the Kellogg Institute will be used to conduct the baseline survey of the trial.