Carbon tax,tourism CO2 emissions and economic welfare

This paper, using a computable general equilibrium model, presents a simulation study of the changes in carbon emissions and economic welfare which could be brought about through a carbon tax policy in China's tourism industry. Our results clearly indicate that a carbon tax policy could have a remarkable impact on tourism-related carbon emissions and economic welfare. In addition, we find those impacts would be significantly different at different times. Also, the impacts of different carbon taxes on the different sectors of the tourism industry are also quite different. Furthermore, our analysis highlights three key managerial recommendations that are relevant for Chinese tourism policy-makers. Our results also have a certain reference value for the management of other low-carbon tourism destinations.     

Managing sustainable practices in cruise tourism: the assessment of carbon footprint and waste of water and beverage packaging

This paper's aim is to present an analysis of the carbon - dioxide emissions and waste associated with water and beverage packaging. The assessment of the packaging's carbon footprint (CF) and waste is also considered for all passengers who visit Italian ports on cruise ships. These factors are considered at two points in time (2010 and 2018) to allow for the evaluation of changes due to technological innovations in the packaging sector. Finally, a best-case framework scenario for the management of water and beverage packaging materials is identified to evaluate whether the use of appropriate strategies can reduce CF and waste in this sector. The results indicate that adequate changes in packaging can minimize waste and reduce the consumption of materials and energy resources in the packaging production cycle, thus creating environmental benefits.     

Ecological footprint analysis of road transport related to tourism activity: The case for Lanzarote Island

This work tries to evaluate road transport usage in Lanzarote Island and its implications for sustainable tourism development. The methodology followed here is the ecological footprint indicator. Its evaluation is based on projections of trip matrix estimated for Lanzarote Island. This study allows us to determine, in an approximate way, the environmental impact (that is, the contribution to climate change) of car usage on the island. Besides, it permits to extract some important conclusions about the trade-off existing between the need of individual mobility and tourism development in Lanzarote Island.     

Carbon dioxide emissions from transport in Taiwan's national parks

Transport profoundly affects energy use and carbon dioxide emissions in the tourism sector. This study focuses on five national parks in Taiwan, namely Kenting National Park, Yushan National Park, Yangmingshan National Park, Taroko National Park and Sheipa National Park, and applies a bottom-up approach to determine the amount of CO₂ emissions from domestic tourism transport in 1999–2006. The CO₂ emission factor of private car derived in this study reveals a higher value than that of previous study due to its lower load factors. Moreover, CO₂ emissions per person are different in each national park, influenced by the attributes of travel distance and transport mode. The scenario analysis indicates that CO₂ emission can be reduced by increasing load factors of transport, tourist switching from private cars to public transport and going to destinations close to their points of departure, which can be achieved by authorities through activity management, regulation control and price adjustment. This is also an adequate solution for Taiwan Government owing to the increases in transport volume and the limited tourism budget.     

The effect of tourism investment on tourism development and CO2 emissions: empirical evidence from the EU nations

Abstract

The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of tourism investment on tourism development and CO₂ emissions in a panel of 28 EU countries using annual data from 1990 to 2013. The empirical results from a panel cointegration test confirm the presence of long-run equilibrium relationship among the variables. The long-run elasticities indicate that tourism investment has a significant positive and negative impact on tourism development and CO₂ emissions, respectively. Finally, the short-run heterogeneous panel non-causality test results show the evidence of bidirectional causality between tourism investment and tourism revenue. These results therefore suggest that tourism investments not only increase tourism revenue but also reduce CO₂ emissions. Given these findings, we suggest the policy makers of the EU nations to initiate more effective policies to increase the tourism investments. The increasing tourism investments will allow the industry to grow further by ensuring sustainable tourism development across the EU member countries.     

Food management in tourism: Reducing tourism’s carbon ‘foodprint’

Food production and consumption have a range of sustainability implications, including their contribution to global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). As some foodstuffs entail higher GHG emissions than others, managing their use in tourism-related contexts could make a significant contribution to climate change mitigation. This article reviews the carbon intensity of selected foods and discusses how foodservice providers could adapt their practices. It shows that even though food management could substantially reduce the GHG emissions of foodservice providers, its application is currently hampered by the complexity of food production chains and a lack of dependable data on the GHG intensity of foodstuffs. Nevertheless, it is possible to make a number of recommendations in respect of how foodservice providers can better purchase, prepare and present foods. Further research is now needed to refine and extend our understanding of the contribution that food management can make to reducing tourism’s carbon ‘foodprint’.     

Importance-performance analysis (IPA) of sustainable tourism initiatives: The resident perspective

While importance-performance analysis (IPA) is one of the most ubiquitous methodological tools utilized in tourism research, its supply-side application to residents has been lacking. Additionally, little research has examined residents' perceptions of sustainable tourism initiatives (STIs) or their community's performance on these STIs. Given this gap, this study conducted an IPA of resident attitudes towards STIs across three U.S. counties in the Commonwealth of Virginia with varying levels of emphasis placed on sustainable tourism within their strategic plans. The results revealed residents of the three counties placed uniformly high levels of importance on the STIs, but varied in their perceptions of performance. The county with the most emphasis placed on sustainable tourism within their plan was found to have the highest performance evaluations. Methodological and theoretical considerations are discussed in detail, including the placement of cross-hairs and how IPA can be situated within social exchange theory and Oliver's expectancy-disconfirmation paradigm.     

Tourism's climate mitigation dilemma: Flying between rich and poor countries

Stronger demand for medium- to long-haul air transport is the main driver of the tourism industry's increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, causing the current development of global tourism to be environmentally unsustainable. Efficiency improvements and biofuel usage are unlikely to maintain pace with the projected growth in transport volume. Therefore, curbing the growing demand for air transport has been suggested as another option for the sustainable development of tourism. However, the political and industry discourse concerning the restriction of air transport tends to label such a restriction as unethical, as such limits would impair the development that tourism brings to poor countries. This paper investigates the possible impacts of air travel restrictions on the least developed countries (LDCs) and non-LDCs by examining global tourism. The impacts on LDCs are found to be ‘neutral’ on average, with both losses and gains in tourist arrivals. The extent of any losses does not appear to be beyond the scope of possible economic compensation.     

Current issues in tourism: Mitigating climate change in sustainable tourism research

This paper adopts a problematising review approach to examine the extent of mitigating climate change research in the sustainable tourism literature. As climate change has developed into an existential global environmental crisis and while tourism's emissions are still increasing, one would expect it to be at the heart of sustainable tourism research. However, from a corpus of 2573 journal articles featuring ‘sustainable tourism’ in their title, abstract, or keywords, only 6.5% covered climate change mitigation. Our critical content analysis of 35 of the most influential papers found that the current methods, scope and traditions of tourism research hamper effective and in-depth research into climate change. Transport, the greatest contributor to tourism's emissions, was mostly overlooked, and weak definitions of sustainability were common. Tight system boundaries, lack of common definitions and incomplete data within tourism studies appear to hamper assessing ways to mitigate tourism's contribution to climate change.     

旅游收入、交通基础设施和二氧化碳排放——基于PVAR模型的多变量经济学分析

本文基于中国30个省级行政区2000—2019年的面板数据,运用广义矩方法估计的面板向量自回归模型,建立一个包含旅游、交通基础设施和二氧化碳排放的多变量计量经济学模型,探讨中国旅游、交通基础设施和二氧化碳排放之间的动态关系及其空间异质性。主要研究结论：（1）全国和东中部地区存在旅游收入和交通基础设施之间的双向格兰杰因果关系,铁路里程对旅游收入的贡献要大于公路里程。（2）全国和东部地区存在旅游收入和二氧化碳排放之间的双向因果关系,旅游收入对东部地区碳排放增长的贡献最大,对西部地区碳排放增长的贡献最小。（3）公路和铁路对二氧化碳的贡献率在中部地区最大。总体上,交通基础设施与二氧化碳排放之间的格兰杰因果关系不显著。本文首次建立了一个多变量经济学分析框架综合性地讨论中国旅游收入、交通基础设施和二氧化碳排放之间的关联。文章提出的研究框架对不同空间区域和尺度的研究和实践均具有一定的启示意义。     

Sustainable tourism implementation in urban areas: a case study of London

Sustainable tourism is a concept widely embraced by managers and planners of tourist destinations. However, it has received little attention in the context of urban tourism, an area of research that has until recently been largely neglected by academics. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge on sustainable tourism implementation in large cities, by using London as an exploratory case study. Through the collection and analysis of both primary and secondary data (online survey, semi-structured interviews and document analysis), it seeks to explore whether local authorities have implemented policies towards sustainable tourism in the capital. The findings indicate that although the concept of sustainable tourism is perceived as important by policy makers, only a few local authorities in London promote its principles in their policy documents and even fewer have initiatives to put them in practice. Most of these initiatives are isolated activities which address limited aspects of sustainable tourism. The paper concludes that despite some progress made to date, in the current economic climate, growth and development remain the main objectives of governments and local authorities, while social and environmental issues are often left behind.     

Evolutionary analysis of sustainable tourism

This paper aims to explore an effective green incentive mechanism for government to develop traditional tourism into green tourism by establishing a dynamic evolutionary game model among governments, tourism enterprises, and tourists. We first discuss the evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) regarding green innovation and its corresponding conditions for each stakeholder, and then analyze the ESS between tourism enterprises and tourists, with and without consideration of government green supervision. The optimal green incentive condition for driving all stakeholders to conduct green behavior is identified. More importantly, we advise the government to first implement green incentive mechanism in the areas where the tourism market scale is relatively small. Additionally, we utilize numerical examples to illustrate the findings and provide some managerial insights.     

Theoretical activity in sustainable tourism research

There is growing recognition in tourism and sustainable tourism research of the need for a fuller engagement in theoretical activity. The paper examines how different research strategies in recent articles on sustainable tourism have advanced theoretical understanding in this research field. The articles advance thinking through ideas and concepts connected with political ecology, mobilities, transition pathways, and behavioural and systems change. They are evaluated using a typology of research strategies associated with theoretical work, using a broad perspective on this work. The research strategy typology was developed for the paper, and it is explained and illustrated. While the papers on sustainable tourism use a range of strategies associated with theoretical activity, there is only limited engagement with “big” social theories.     

Destination competitiveness and tourism development in Russia: Issues and challenges

With new border policies and the development of travel infrastructure, international tourism to Russia experienced double-digit growth in the past few years. Yet, few authors have reported on the challenges the country faces towards sustainable tourism development and competitiveness. This study discusses issues that have affected and that will continue to affect tourism in Russia. The tenets of destination competitiveness and sustainable development are used to guide a critical discussion of tourism in Russia. The study results from a three-year project that brought together European and Russian partners. Despite great potential, tourism development in Russia remains hindered by numerous issues such as destination image, infrastructure development, workforce training and education, quality management, and sustainable management. Beyond contributing to the tourism academic literature, this paper also aims at contributing to private and public policy stakeholders who prepare the future of Russia's tourism with Russian universities.     

The water footprint of tourism in Spain

This study complements the water footprint (WF) estimations for Spain, incorporating insights of the process analysis and input–output (IO) analysis. We evaluate the virtual (both blue and green consumed) water trade of agricultural and industrial products, but also of services, especially through tourism, for a country in which more than 10% of the gross domestic product (GDP) derives from this activity. We use domestic and import disaggregated tables in the agro-alimentary activities, based mainly on national agrarian, industrial, services and trade statistics. In order to obtain import coefficients, water data and IO tables of the main trade partners are used to reproduce the technology of these economies. Results show that 16% of the Spanish exports are due to foreign tourism, thus the water footprint of foreign tourism in Spain is 3.7 km³. Finally, we compare reductions in total tourism expenditure and the domestic and global water footprint of tourism using four scenarios.     

Interactions between climate change and the tourism sector: Multiple-criteria decision analysis to assess mitigation and adaptation options in tourism areas

Tourism is one of the most climate-sensitive economic sectors, but also a contributor to climate change. With the effects of climate change becoming an increasing concern, the tourism sector must urgently and realistically respond by mitigating its emissions and adapting tourism businesses and destinations to the changing climate conditions. This work presents a generic methodological framework to plan, manage and implement climate change mitigation and adaptation measures in the tourism context. The methodological scheme is based on Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis for prioritizing available options applicable to a defined tourism area. The proposed framework is implemented for Greece, one of the world's most popular tourism destinations, and optimally ranks 18 mitigation and 16 adaptation measures under 4 criteria i.e. environmental benefit, applicability, cost and social acceptance. The analysis indicates that rational energy use, improvement of energy efficiency and water management/saving measures should be primarily put forward for the Greek case.     

长江中游地区产业结构对旅游业碳排放的影响研究

基于2000~2016年长江中游地区省域面板数据,构建产业结构和旅游业发展水平综合评价指标体系,并核算出该地区旅游业碳排放量,在此基础上通过建立向量自回归(VAR)模型,运用Johansen协整检验、格兰杰因果检验、脉冲响应和方差分解工具,分析产业结构、旅游业发展与旅游业碳排放的演变特征及影响机制。结果表明:研究区产业结构和旅游业发展水平在逐步提升的同时表现出显著的区域非平衡特征;产业结构、旅游业发展和旅游业碳排放之间存在长期均衡关系,且产业结构调整对碳排放影响更大;产业结构优化在长期内有抑制碳排放增加的作用,但目前研究区技术进步对旅游业的减排效应尚未显现,未来减排空间较大。     

Estimating the tourism induced environmental Kuznets curve in France

Abstract

France has retained its position as the world’s favourite tourism destination. Accounting for around 83 million visitors and 4.2% of the total employment, the tourism sector in France contributes to nearly 9% of the total GDP. However, as reported by the World Tourism Organization, road and air travel related to tourism activities account for approximately 10% of the total CO₂ emissions in the atmosphere, thereby contributing to severe air pollution. Thus, initiatives are necessary to prevent environmental damage that could have a corresponding detrimental effect on the tourism industry itself and slow down the country’s economic growth. This study utilises a vector error correction model (VECM) to investigate the relationship between polluting emissions, GDP levels, and tourism flows in France to test the validity of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for the period 1995–2014. Additionally, based on a joint analysis of long-run parameters and causality links, appropriate policy strategies are proposed to promote robust and sustainable long-run economic growth.     

The Cittaslow philosophy in the context of sustainable tourism development; the case of Turkey

This paper studies the Cittaslow (slow city) philosophy in terms of sustainable tourism development (STD); and in this context research was undertaken for the case of Turkey. Cittaslow, a movement rooted in STD philosophy, aims to encourage the development of tranquil cities already known for their historical, natural, socio-cultural, and touristic features and the intention is to offer a significant contribution to systematic and rapid implementation of STD on a global scale. This paper, which makes a particular study of the practice of STD in Turkey, offers new candidate cities (Uzungöl, Hasankeyf, Safranbolu, Ürgüp, and İznik) and, thus, endeavours to contribute to the spread of STD throughout the whole country. In this study, above-named cities were found to be particularly good candidates for Cittaslow membership. In addition to these: Tatvan, Midyat, Alanya, and Fethiye were also found to be potential Cittaslows even though they fail to meet the population criterion.     

Residents' support for tourism development: The role of residents' place image and perceived tourism impacts

Drawing on the triple bottom line approach for tourism impacts (economic, socio-cultural and environmental) and adopting a non-forced approach for measuring residents' perception of these impacts, this study explores the role of residents' place image in shaping their support for tourism development. The tested model proposes that residents' place image affects their perceptions of tourism impacts and in turn their support for tourism development. The results stress the need for a more flexible and resident-oriented measurement of tourism impacts, revealing that more favorable perceptions of the economic, socio-cultural and environmental impacts lead to greater support. Moreover, while residents' place image has been largely neglected by tourism development studies, the findings of this study reveal its significance in shaping residents' perception of tourism impacts as well as their level of support. The practical implications of the findings for tourism planning and development are also discussed.