The spatial effect of short-term rental regulations: The comparison between Barcelona and Paris

In recent years, short-term rentals have grown exponentially in European tourist cities. Supply is concentrated in city centers, exacerbating the spatial inequalities caused by urban tourism. To mitigate these effects, some urban governments have introduced regulations to decongest and redistribute short-term rentals more evenly in the city. Research analyzing the spatial effects of these regulations is scarce. This paper aims to fill that gap by examining the spatial effects of regulations in Barcelona and Paris, using a combination of statistical and spatial methods. While Barcelona implemented zonal restrictions aimed at redistributing supply, Paris introduced temporal restrictions. The findings show that, compared to Paris, Barcelona experiences a greater decongestion of short-term rentals in the city center. These effects are due to Barcelona municipality's capacity to remove illegal activities concentrated in the city center, rather than to the mere zonal restrictions. The evidence from this study suggests lessons for other cities. In particular, the research indicates that adopting regulatory spatial approaches alone is not enough to decongest short-term rentals, but what makes the difference is the effectiveness of policy enforcement, highlighting that time restrictions are very challenging to monitor.