The political economy of tourism in North Africa: Comparative perspectives

Tourism has become a salient sector in the economic‐development strategies of North Africa, despite the fact that the states of the region have met with varying degrees of success in their attempts to expand and develop their tourism sectors. This article adopts a political‐economy approach to the analysis of tourism in North Africa. Its aims are to highlight the main aspects of the region's political economy that have influenced outcomes in the tourism sector of each country, and then to explain the political dynamics that underlie the tourism sectors of the region. This article asserts that all North African states now have embraced tourism—albeit with varying amounts of enthusiasm—as a key economic industry. It examines the relationship between tourism and economic reform in the region, followed by the political dynamics of the sector, arguing that tourism is a very political affair, but for reasons different than in other sectors of the economy. It concludes with some observations on the strategic and developmental challenges that confront the development of tourism in North Africa. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Factors Influencing Partial and Complete Adoption of Organic Farming Practices in Saskatchewan, Canada

Using a sample of organic producers in Saskatchewan, Canada, this study uses a Tobit model to identify the factors that discourage or encourage the complete adoption of organic farming and to assess why farmers differ in the share of total cultivated crop area they allocate to organic practices. In particular, the study evaluates the effect of transaction costs on the decision to convert partially or completely from conventional to organic practices. The results highlight the importance of lowering certain transaction costs to encourage the adoption of organic management practices. Significant transaction costs were found to include infrastructure and services, satisfaction with marketer performance, marketing problems, and Internet use. Results suggest that farmers with smaller land holdings are more inclined to undertake complete adoption. While the education levels of organic farmers show no significant effect on the probability of adoption, younger organic farmers allocate significantly less of their cultivated area to organic practices. À partir d'un échantillon de producteurs de cultures biologiques de la Saskatchewan, au Canada, nous avons utilisé un modèle Tobit pour déterminer les facteurs qui encouragent ou découragent l'adoption totale des pratiques agricoles biologiques et les raisons pour lesquelles le pourcentage des superficies consacrées aux cultures biologiques varie d'un producteur à l'autre. Nous avons également examiné les répercussions des coûts de transaction sur la décision de passer, en totalité ou en partie, des pratiques conventionnelles aux pratiques biologiques. Les résultats ont fait ressortir l'importance de réduire certains coûts de transaction afin d'encourager l'adoption des méthodes agronomiques biologiques. Les coûts de transaction les plus importants incluaient les infrastructures et les services, l'efficacité des intermédiaires, les problèmes liés à la mise en marché et l'utilisation d'Internet. Les résultats autorisent à penser que les producteurs agricoles qui possèdent de petites superficies sont plus enclins à adopter en totalité l'agriculture biologique. Alors que le niveau de scolarité des producteurs ne semble pas avoir de répercussions sur la probabilité d'adopter l'agriculture biologique, les jeunes producteurs de cultures biologiques consacrent beaucoup moins de leurs superficies cultivées à la culture biologique.     

An Economic Analysis of Western Canadian Grain Export Capacity

Record grain supplies combined with insufficient grain export capacity in the 2013–14 and 2014–15 crop years resulted in depressed Western Canadian grain prices costing producers several billion dollars. The exceptional size of the crop and the harsh winter weather contributing to this costly event raise an important question as to whether additional investment in export capacity is warranted. This study systematically assesses the need for additional grain export capacity in Western Canada. Somewhat conservative grain production forecasts and rational expectations storage are used within a spatial mathematical programming model to simulate a competitive market, moving grain to export positions. We find in the absence of additional export capacity there will be increasingly frequent periods of costly congestion. A 10 million tonnes (Mt) (5 Mt) improvement in both rail and West Coast capacity implies $9.2 billion ($6.0 billion) of cost‐saving benefits for the producers over the 2016–25 period. While these estimates are sensitive to future realized production levels, their magnitude suggests that innovation to increase export capacity is economically important for grain producers in Western Canada. Des approvisionnements records de grains combinés à une capacité exportatrice insuffisante de ces derniers en 2013–14 et en 2014–15 ont engendré le bas prix du grain de l'Ouest canadien représentant une perte de milliards de dollars pour les producteurs. La production exceptionnelle et l'hiver particulièrement rude ont contribué à cet événement coûteux et soulèvent une question importante concernant le besoin pour des investissements additionnels en capacité exportatrice. Cette étude évalue systématiquement le besoin pour une capacité exportatrice accrue des céréales provenant de l'Ouest canadien. Les prévisions relativement prudentes de production de grains et l'anticipation rationnelle de stockage servent dans le cadre d'un modèle de programmation mathématique spatiale pour simuler un marché compétitif, transportant le grain vers les points d'exportation. Les trouvailles indiquent qu'en l'absence de capacité supplémentaire exportatrice, surviendront des périodes de plus en plus fréquentes de congestion coûteuse. Une amélioration de 10 Mt (5 Mt) à la capacité ferroviaire et de la Côte Ouest suppose des réductions de coûts à la hauteur de 9,2 milliards de dollars (6 milliards de dollars) pour les producteurs pour la période entre 2016 et 2025. Ces estimations étant liées à l'atteinte de futurs niveaux de production, leur importance suggère que l'innovation en vue d'accroître la capacité exportatrice s'avère économiquement essentielle pour les producteurs céréaliers de l'ouest du Canada.     

The role of Great Barrier Reef tourism operators in addressing climate change through strategic communication and direct action

The projected decline in reef health worldwide will have huge repercussions on millions of stakeholders depending upon coral reefs. Urgent action is needed to sustain coral reefs into the future. Tourism operators are recognised as stewards of Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR), a World Heritage Site, and are taking action on climate change, through their business practices and by engaging guests with interpretation and targeted messages. Yet little is known about how tourism operators along the GBR perceive climate change, or what actions they believe are most effective to address climate change impacts on the GBR. We describe a set of semi-structured interviews with 19 tourism operators in the Whitsundays and Cairns, the most popular tourism destinations along the GBR. Using a thematic analysis to code and report patterns within the data, we show tourism operators recognise the threat of climate change and strongly support increased action to address it. Most respondents are hesitant to engage their guests about climate change despite acknowledging an interest, expertise, and responsibility to do so. Understanding the barriers preventing tourism operators from addressing climate change is an important step towards helping them, and the tourists visiting the region, take action to protect the GBR.     

Benchmarking CVB website performance: Spatial and structural patterns

This study evaluated 967 U.S. CVB websites using a modified Balanced Scorecard (mBSC) approach which assesses website performance with respect to overall technical functionality, customer friendliness and usability, effectiveness of marketing the destination, and information content. Spatial maps were constructed for these four dimensions and overall CVB website performance using ArcMap v.9.2 GIS software. A structural pattern of CVB website performance was obtained using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). It was concluded that CVB websites primarily need improvement in marketing the destination product. The analysis revealed significant differences in website performance between members and non-members of Destination Marketing Association International (DMAI) as well as regional differences. Study implications for destination marketing organizations and CVB website designers are discussed.     

The Benefits and Costs of Zero Tillage RD&E on the Canadian Prairies

The development and adoption of zero tillage has profoundly transformed cropping systems in Western Canada. In this paper, we describe key drivers and aspects of this innovation process and quantify the overall economic impacts of adoption and the benefit cost of research development and extension, which accelerated the adoption. Estimating on‐site and off‐site benefits we find very high benefit–cost ratios, suggesting a need to maintain institutions that can foster the development of similar innovations. Le développement et l'adoption des techniques sans labour (TSL) ont profondément transformé les systèmes de culture dans l’Ouest Canadien. Dans cet article, nous décrivons les principales causes et les aspects de ce processus d'innovation et quantifions les conséquences économiques de l'adoption et le avantage‐coût de recherche‐développement et vulgarisation, ce qui ont accéléré l'adoption. Estimer les bénéficies sur site et hors site nous avons trouvé que les ratios avantage‐coût est très élevé, ce qui suggère la nécessité de maintenir les institutions qui favorisent le développement d'innovations similaires.     

ENGAGING TIMESHARE OWNERS IN TOURISM DESTINATION MANAGEMENT: TOURISM PLANNING AND TOURISM MARKETING IMPLICATIONS

It is important to understand tourists' willingness to participate in tourism planning and the factors influencing their willingness because they are an integral part of the destination and ultimately one of the main buyers of the product. Timeshare owners are a special group of tourists who have additional connections with the tourism destination through their timeshare. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among timeshare owners' perceptions of tourism planning, civic engagement, sense of place, and willingness to participate in tourism planning.

This study was based on a questionnaire survey of U.S. timeshare owners. The total sample size was 302. A two‐stage structural equation modeling approach was applied in data analysis. Results from the measurement model suggested that the model fit the data quite well. Results from the structural model suggested that timeshare owners' perceptions of tourism planning, their past history of civic participation, and their sense of place significantly impact their willingness to participate in tourism planning, while timeshare owners' past experience in political participation did not significantly affect their willingness to participate in tourism planning. Implications of the findings in tourism planning and tourism destination marketing are presented.     

Stochastic Biases in Technical Change in U.S. Agriculture: A Bootstrap Approach

Having argued that the modeling of technical change as a smooth deterministic function of time is likely to misrepresent the true nature of technical change, this paper reexamines biased technical change in U.S. agriculture using a system of share equations with unobserved components errors, with technology treated as a stochastic unobserved variable. Employing data to represent the aggregate output and input of the U.S. agricultural sector over the period 1947–94, significant factor biases were found that appear to be linearly independent and do not appear to be smooth and deterministic. Technical change in U.S. agriculture appears to have been biased toward saving expenditure on labor at the expense of expenditure on intermediate inputs, with some small saving on the expenditure on capital inputs over the entire period 1947‐94. The paper also employs a bootstrapping approach in order to obtain finite sample tests with approximately the correct size under less stringent assumptions about the data generating process than assumed by maximum likelihood (ML) based approaches. Using these finite sample values significantly alters the conclusions reached regarding the nature of technical change. Après avoir démontré que la modélisation du changement technique par une fonction lissée déterministe du temps peut ne pas représenter correctement sa vraie nature, cet papier re‐examine le biais du changement technique dans l'agriculture américaine à partir d'un systè d'équations de parts avec des erreurs non observées et une technologie traitée comme une variable stochastique non observée. A partir de données représentant la production et les intrants agrégés dans le secteur agricole américain sur la période 1947–1994, nous constatons que les biais significatifs sont indépendants linéairement et qui ne sont pas des fonctions déterministes lissées du temps. Le changement technique dans l'agriculture américaine est biaisé en faveur des réductions de dépenses de travail aux dépends des dépenses sur les intrants intermédiaires et montre quelques économies sur les dépenses de capital sur la période 1947‐1994. L'emploi des techniques de bootstrapping permet d'obtenir des tests sur échantillons finis avec des hypothèses moins exigeantes que celles imposées par les approches de maximum de vraisemblance. Les conclusions obtenues à partir de ces tests sont significativement différentes que celles obtenues par les méthodes traditionnelles concernant le changement technique.     

Western Canadian producers’ attitudes towards wheat breeding funding

In 2017, the federal government initiated national consultations for two new crop royalty systems that could be used to support additional crop breeding. In this study, we examine wheat growers’ attitudes towards breeding research and assess their inclination to contribute more to wheat variety development through checkoffs or enhanced royalties. We report a random effect probit estimation for a survey of 877 western Canadian wheat producers that took place from November 2018 to January 2019. We found at least 26% of survey respondents were willing to pay more to support additional wheat breeding. However, this support is contingent on the model for revenue collection and where additional revenue is invested. Producers generally favored increased checkoffs over enhanced royalty collection. Among the royalty options presented, the farm saved seed royalties mechanism had less support than the simpler to implement end-point royalties mechanism. We also found support is much higher if new royalty mechanisms are used to support university or government programs versus private breeding programs. This result suggests developing widespread producer support for enhanced royalty collection may require broader commitments for funding, ownership, and control of crop breeding programs.     

Subsistence and semi‐subsistence farming in selected EU new member states

Factor analysis and cluster analysis are used to analyze the attitudes and perceptions of agricultural households toward farming, commercialization, and barriers to and drivers for increased integration in agricultural markets. Data come from farms in five EU New Member States. The contribution of unsold output to total household income is valued. Stepwise linear regression is employed to detect variables useful in explaining the degree of agricultural market integration of farm households. The analysis indicates that subsistence farming is of utmost importance for the rural poor, particularly in Bulgaria and Romania. The proportion of consumption from own production, manual cultivation techniques, and distance to an urban center are negatively correlated with output sales. Rural development policies targeted at rural physical and market infrastructure might relieve some of these constraints.