Modelling a Tourism Response to Climate Change Using a Four Stage Problem Definition and Response Framework

Climate change has become a hot topic for research, but the response of national governments has been relatively cool, particularly in their support for effective mitigation measures to combat the problem. A review of the scientific literature (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC]. (2007). Summary for policy makers. In S. Solomon, M. Qin, Z. Manning, M. Chen, K. Marquia, M. Averyt, M. Tignor, & H. Miller (Eds.), Climate change 2007: the physical science basis. Contribution of working group 1 to the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York: Cambridge University Press) paints a generally grim view of where the Earth is heading for by the end of the century if effective mitigation strategies are not implemented in the next few years. Mitigation measures of the type required to prevent major environmental damage in the future can only be effective if a global political approach based on agreed levels of climate change gas reduction is implemented. For its part the tourism industry is caught in a trap, unable to adopt meaningful mitigation strategies because of reluctance by consumers to bear the cost of changes that will be required but having to meet the cost of climate change mitigation and adaption strategies when they are introduced in the future. This article proposes a four stage problem definition and response framework with associated models that can be used by the industry to plan for and adapt to climate change both prior to and after the introduction of legislation and policies to combat climate change at the national and international levels.     

The Critical Relationship between Climate Change Awareness and Action: An Origin-Based Perspective

While it is now widely accepted by scientists and governments that human activity contributes to climate change, there is a lack of understanding whether this realisation is now gaining greater attraction with the general public than it had 5 or 10 years ago. Additional gaps in knowledge relate to the link between awareness and action, which could be hypothesised to have become stronger in light of evidence being produced of some projected climate changes occurring already. This article examines climate change awareness and the link with travel-related decision-making by adopting an under-utilised origin perspective in Wellington, New Zealand. The findings, generated by a household mail survey, indicate that the majority of the respondents are aware of tourism's contribution to climate change and think that it is likely that their lives in New Zealand will be negatively affected by climate change. However, when examining the respondents' recent holiday decision-making, it is evident that for the overwhelming majority, climate change awareness does not appear to influence travel-related decisions. This article concludes by discussing demand-focused measures aimed at reducing the GHG emissions generated by tourism.     

Consumerism in Sustainable Tourism: A Survey of UK Consumers

This article presents the results of a survey of tourism consumers from the Destinations Travel Show in the UK in 2000. Four hundred and eleven tourism consumers were interviewed over four days at the show on the type of information that they used in the selection of their holiday destination. This article posits that the power of the consumer can be a major force for progress towards greater sustainability by the tourism industry, acting as a rationale for change, which is often missing from more traditional planning, management or regulatory techniques. The research shows consumers are already making decisions based on environmental, social and economic quality for day-to-day products and are keen to transfer these habits to the purchase of tourism products. Recommendations are made, highlighting the need for the tourism industry to capitalise on this demand for a wider range of product information and so promote moves towards greater levels of sustainability in the industry.     

How Low Can It Go? Analysing the Political Economy of Carbon Market Design and Low Carbon Prices

Despite the ascendency of carbon pricing as a key regulatory strategy for governing anthropogenic climate change, insufficient attention has been paid to the issue of price discovery in emission trading schemes, now the dominant form of carbon pricing globally. By analysing the political economy of carbon market design, this paper highlights a number of design features that are instrumental in depressing carbon prices across the world’s emission trading schemes, keeping them well below those considered necessary to spur deep emission reductions in order to avoid catastrophic global warming. In doing so, it advances critiques of carbon trading by illuminating the extent to which carbon markets manifest as expressions of specific power relations rooted in the political economy of advanced capitalism, with low prices ensuring minimal disruption to business as usual.     

Adverse Welfare Shocks and Pro‐Environmental Behavior: Evidence from the Global Economic Crisis

This paper examines the effects of the 2008–9 global economic crisis on people's pro‐environmental behavior and willingness to pay for climate change mitigation. We hypothesize that the crisis has affected pro‐environmental behaviors through tightening of budget constraints and relaxation of time constraints. Using data from a large representative survey Life in Transition II, conducted in 35 European and Central Asian countries in 2010, we find that people adversely affected by the crisis are more likely to act in an environmentally‐friendly way, but less likely to be willing to pay for climate change mitigation. Our findings confirm the importance of time and budget constraints for undertaking pro‐environmental action, and highlight a potentially positive role of adverse, external welfare shocks in shaping pro‐environmental behavior.     

气候变化给中国企业带来的挑战和机遇

近年,气候变化对人类社会的生存和发展构成了威胁,成为国际社会普遍关心的重大全球性问题。作为社会责任的履约者以及气候变化的利益相关者之一,企业在温室气体减排过程中担任着重要的角色,成为履行减排义务的落脚点和最终实施者。     

Resilient Growth: Fantasy Plans and Unplanned Developments in India's Flood‐Prone Coastal Cities

Academic and policy literatures on urban climate resilience tend to emphasize ‘good planning’ as the primary means for addressing the growing risk of flooding in Asia's coastal megacities. Cities have come to rely on disaster and climate resilience plans to future‐proof their landscapes and protect vulnerable populations. Yet while data is collected, models are built and plans are drafted, environmentally destructive development practices continue unabated and often unchallenged. This article examines and seeks to explain the contradictions between a growing awareness of the risks of climate‐induced flooding in resilience plans and the continuation of development practices widely acknowledged to exacerbate those risks. It analyzes these contradictions in the context of Mumbai and Kolkata, India's largest coastal cities, which are facing the severest threats from climate‐induced flooding. Based on analyses of key resilience planning documents and both planned and unplanned developments in some of Mumbai's and Kolkata's most ecologically sensitive areas, our analysis reveals that resilience planning, promoted by the central government and international consultants, and presented in locally produced ‘fantasy plans’, fails to address the risks of climate‐change‐related flooding owing to tendencies to sidestep questions of politics, power and the distributional conflicts that shape urban development. We conclude that efforts to reduce urban flood risk would benefit from the research, methods and analytic concepts used to critically study cities, but significant gaps remain between these fields.     

Cognitive factors that lead people to comply with spam email

Because of the annoyance and productivity loss associated with spam email, significant resources are devoted to detect and block it. Despite these deterrents, people receive and respond to spam email in sufficient numbers to support the continuing efforts of spammers. It is surprising given this situation that little is known about the cognitive processes that message receivers apply to evaluate spam email, although such knowledge could be useful in mitigating some of its worst aspects. We address this research gap by investigating three cognitive factors that are hypothesized to motivate individuals to comply with message requests. We find receivers’ perceptions of social presence and trust regarding the message sender and, to a lesser extent, receivers’ benefit goals explain over half of the variance in their intention to comply with a message request. In addition, receivers’ identification of the message sender as having strong interpersonal ties predicts their perception of trust and benefit goals related to the message, and we find that effects of strong interpersonal ties on receivers’ intention to comply with the message request are entirely mediated by the three cognitive factors we studied. Overall, the findings indicate that receivers who read spam email evaluate messages based on diverse criteria that vary substantially based on strength of their perceived interpersonal ties with the message sender.     

Gender and inorganic nitrogen: what are the implications of moving towards a more balanced use of nitrogen fertilizer in the tropics?

For agriculture to play a role in climate change mitigation strategies to reduce emissions from inorganic nitrogen (N) fertilizer through a more balanced and efficient use are necessary. Such strategies should align with the overarching principle of sustainable intensification and will need to consider the economic, environmental and social trade-offs of reduced fertilizer-related emissions. However, the gender equity dimensions of such strategies are rarely considered. The case studies cited in this paper, from India, Lake Victoria in East Africa and more broadly from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), show that the negative externalities of imbalanced inorganic N use in high- and low-use scenarios impact more strongly on women and children. We examine, through a literature review of recent work in SSA, the relative jointness of intra-household bargaining processes in low N use scenarios to assess the degree to which they impact upon N use. We suggest that gender-equitable strategies for achieving more balanced use of N will increase the likelihood of attaining macro-level reductions in GHG emissions provided that they secure equity in intra-household decision-making and address food security. Gender-equitable N use efficiency strategies will help to integrate and assure gender and social equity co-benefits at local scales.     

Can monthly-return rank order reveal a hidden dimension of momentum? The post-cost evidence from the U.S. stock markets

We introduce a new return-momentum indicator that is based on monotonicity of monthly-return rank order within a lookback period (henceforth abbreviated as MRRO). Based on an extensive post-cost performance comparison of long-only momentum portfolios formed on six stand-alone and 36 double-sort criteria across three holding period lengths in the non-microcap universe of U.S. stocks over the 55-year sample period, MRRO is particularly useful for annual holding periods, towards the end of whom the conventional return-momentum indicators tend to lose their prediction power. Based on the return-based style analysis, MRRO adds some favorable style-diversification characteristics into long-only momentum portfolio selection.