Tourism Development in Border Regions of Russia: Methodological Foundations of Typology and its Approbation

Peripheral Russian border regions traditionally lag behind in a pronounced differentiation in the development of regions. The search for ways to level differences is associated with options for diversifying the economy, including the development of tourism and the study of the specifics of its development in the border area, which is the reason for the relevance of the study. For a country in which more than half of all regions are border regions and the border is the longest in the world, the border itself is in a state of transformation, and the role of the border factor is only increasing, the study of the influence of the border factor on economic systems, including tourism, is a particularly relevant scientific and practical task. Border regions of Russia were the objects of the research. The purpose of the study is related to the development of a methodological approach to the typology of the border areas of Russia in the context of unlocking the tourism potential. The testing of this approach was carried out on a set of pre-Covid data, helping to test the hypothesis that tourism systems in border regions develop in connection with additional incentives created by the border. However, this positive impact may not manifest itself equally in all parts of the border. The authors substantiated and carried out a typology of border regions according to the peculiarities of tourism development. The typology was made using the cluster analysis method. As a result, the types of border regions were determined according to the parameters of the influence of the border position on the development of tourism. The approach to typology proposed in the paper contributes to the development of the theories of management of the spatial organization of regional economic systems. From a practical point of view, the proposed methodology and the results of typology take into account the knowledge of various aspects of border regions, help identify development incentives, make adjustments to the budgetary policy of border regions, and become the basis for developing management and investment decisions.