Sustainability in the tour operator – ground agent supply chain

This research aims to identify, and critically understand, the key opportunities for and barriers against tour operators and their ground handlers sourcing and selling more sustainable tourism products. The study is framed in the literature of organisational culture and buyer–seller collaborations both downstream (sustainable supply chain management) and upstream (business-to-business marketing). Semi-structured interviews help to identify the tour operators’ barriers, opportunities and key decision-making criteria. The findings suggest that a supportive organisational culture is a prerequisite to success for companies that wish to scale up the volume of sustainable products they source and sell. Sustainability only sells when it contributes to an organisation’s ability to meet its requirement of quality of service, especially in relation to suitability of the products to its target markets and reinforcing professional and trustworthy relationships. For services that are keenly priced, and/or that have tight health and safety regulations, buyers and sellers often lack the motivation to consider sustainability requirements unless they are clearly valued and marketed. Business-to-business marketing requires suppliers to understand the relative importance of sustainability to each of their buyers and, in response, to develop appropriate arguments to explain the importance of sustainability within their buyers’ organisational needs.     

Supply Management and Productivity Growth in Alberta Dairy

Specification of quota licenses as quasi-fixed inputs in a multi-variate flexible accelerator model of dynamic input adjustment reveals supply management's effect on Alberta dairy investment patterns and, thereby, on total factor productivity growth. Estimates of a dynamic dual model of Alberta dairy, using panel data from 1975–91, show that strong complementarity between cattle and quota licenses results in short-run cattle adjustments that are opposite in direction from the long-run adjustments. A model of total factor productivity growth under dynamic input adjustment shows that the distortions to cattle investment caused by investing in quota licenses adversely affects productivity growth. As a result, there is likely to be a significant understatement of single-period estimates of the cost of supply management in the dairy sector.     

Implementing chemicals policy: leaders or laggards?

Prioritization of regulatory agency resources remains a key issue in the management of industrial pollution. This is likely to become increasingly important as a new EC chemicals policy is implemented and measures are introduced to achieve the OSPAR zero emissions target. The Environment Agency (England and Wales) has updated the Operator Pollution and Risk Assessment (OPRA) scheme, but it still includes no quantitative measurement of operator attitudes towards environmental regulation. This is important because regulated firms' attitudes are known to affect regulatory behaviour. This study explores the attitudes of environmental managers from 142 chemical sector companies regulated under Integrated Pollution Control. Analysis of responses from a questionnaire survey revealed a number of regulatory typologies. A ‘conservative’ cluster exhibited satisfaction with the current regulatory system and rejected change. ‘Progressive’ cluster members recognized shortcomings and welcomed change. This methodology could be used alongside OPRA to support decisions necessary to prioritize regulatory resources. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Attractiveness of cultural activities in European cities: A latent class approach

Cultural tourism behaviour and destination preference was analysed for 19 European capital cities, utilising the level of participation in cultural activities (participation) and the level of enjoyment of those cultural activities (attractiveness). A latent class model with three classes described the association in the data satisfactorily. Class 1 was labeled “low participation and high attractiveness”, Class 2 was labeled “high participation and high attractiveness”, and Class 3 was labeled “high participation and low attractiveness”. The Class 2 respondents with high participation and attractiveness had the highest cultural capital, and could be considered ‘specific cultural tourists’, whereas the Class 3 respondents could be considered ‘general cultural tourists’. Class 1 respondents, with relatively infrequent participation but high enjoyment, are potentially most interesting in marketing terms.     

Volunteer tourism impacts in Ghana: a practice approach

Relatively little empirical research has been conducted on impacts of volunteer tourism in local communities. This paper therefore focuses on the local consequences of volunteer tourism for two projects in Tamale, Ghana: Zion Primary School and Tamale Children's Home. A practice approach provides a useful theoretical framework to investigate how volunteers and local actors interact in these projects. In a practice approach, interactions become central to the analysis, highlighting the ways in which volunteers, local people and the local context mutually influence one another. Observations and interviews with volunteers and local actors were used to identify positive and negative consequences of their interactions, which are strongly interlinked and depend on routines, backgrounds and positions of the actors, and contextual conditions. The consequences of volunteer practices are also linked to other current and future practices. A practice approach provides insights into complex situations and may be more suited to analysing the impacts of volunteer tourism than a traditional mono-disciplinary focus.     

Tourism and grey seals in south Devon: management strategies,voluntary controls and tourists’ perceptions of disturbance

Although grey seals are relatively common in Britain, their numbers elsewhere are believed to be decreasing, and some populations in Europe are listed as endangered by the IUCN. This case study focuses on the impacts of seal tourism on a colony of seals on the South Devon coast in the United Kingdom, the effectiveness of current management policies and tourists’ perceptions of the voluntary controls adhered to by tour operators. To monitor impacts, covert observations of the site were undertaken on 60 designated survey days in the summer of 2006, while a survey of tourists taking part in wildlife cruises to the site was conducted during the same period. The observations found that the voluntary codes had reduced disturbance from operators; however, there were still disturbances, mainly from private vessels. The results of the survey showed that tourists were aware of their potential impacts upon the wildlife, and were generally supportive of the voluntary codes in place. Therefore if an honest explanation and interpretation of the potential impacts of seal tourism are provided, it may encourage a protectionist predisposition in wildlife tourists and render the compliance of voluntary codes a highly satisfactory tourist experience rather than a negative one.     

The Control of Invasive Species on Private Property with Neighbor-to-Neighbor Spillovers

Invasive pests cross property boundaries. Property managers may have private incentives to control invasive species despite not having sufficient incentive to fully internalize the external costs of their role in spreading the invasion. Each property manager has a right to future use of his own property, but his property may abut others’ properties enabling spread of an invasive species. The incentives for a foresighted property manager to control invasive species have received little attention. We consider the efforts of a foresighted property manager who has rights to future use of a property and has the ability to engage in repeated, discrete control activities. We find that higher rates of dispersal, associated with proximity to neighboring properties, reduce the private incentives for control. Controlling species at one location provides incentives to control at a neighboring location. Control at neighboring locations are strategic complements and coupled with spatial heterogeneity lead to a weaker-link public good problem, in which each property owner is unable to fully appropriate the benefits of his own control activity. Future-use rights and private costs suggest that there is scope for a series of Coase-like exchanges to internalize much of the costs associated with species invasion. Pigouvian taxes on invasive species potentially have qualitatively perverse behavioral effects. A tax with a strong income effect (e.g., failure of effective revenue recycling) can reduce the value of property assets and diminish the incentive to manage insects on one’s own property.     

New Maize Variety Adoption in Mozambique: A Spatial Approach

Farmers in developing countries can dramatically improve their productivity by adopting new plant varieties. Yet, informational barriers often mean adoption rates remain low. In this study, we focus on how learning from others represents one means of removing informational barriers. We capture the effect of social learning through an explicitly spatial econometric model applied to farm‐level maize adoption rates in Mozambique. We find that social learning is significant and can help explain the apparent clustering of adoption among farmers. Agencies interested in promoting variety adoption, therefore, would be well served to leverage the strength of existing information networks, rather than imposing solutions that work against interfarmer information flow.