View article

This research focuses on eleven countries in the Balkan region, namely Albania, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Turkey. The main aim of the project was to research the wellbeing levels of residents in these countries and the main factors that contribute to their wellbeing. A second aim was to identify which activities they enjoy most in order to develop future domestic and regional leisure and tourism products. Several research methods were used in this study including secondary data collection of academic sources and Quality of Life, Life Satisfaction, Happiness and Wellbeing Reports, and primary data in the form of a questionnaire from 11,000 respondents from the eleven Balkan countries. A Delphi Study was also undertaken with expert practitioners and researchers from seventeen countries. In order to analyse the image and promotion of the countries, research was also undertaken using TripAdvisor.

In the secondary data, most quality of life, life satisfaction and wellbeing studies rank the Balkan countries below average in the EU or OECD countries. In the Human Development Index (2014) the Balkan countries are ranked from 25th (Slovenia) to 95th (Albania) and in the World Happiness Report (2015) they range from 55th (Slovenia) to 134th (Bulgaria). Slovenia also performs best in most aspects of Gallup’s Wellbeing Study (2013) and in the World Happiness Report (2015). However, there are some slightly different results when comparing objective (eg economic and political indicators) and subjective ones (eg feelings, perceptions). For example, the OECD …