Search Results (11)

One of the significant problems of planet Earth is related to food production and consumption. This paper evaluates the role of the tourism sector in generating food waste as well as its potential to drive sustainability. Tackling food loss and waste is acknowledged as urgent, both for the people and the planet. Food waste is particularly problematic in industrialised regions, impeding the fulfilment of the Sustainable Development Goals. Although most of the wasted food originates in households, the contribution of the tourism sector is still relevant. A multidisciplinary reflection is thus carried out to assess the impacts of tourism on food production and consumption, linking them with cultural landscapes. By taking the UK as a case study, common problems of the sector are exposed, including dealing with food that remains uneaten, and the need to accurately assess food waste. Data gaps and guidance in measuring food waste are discussed, and suggestions for mitigating this issue include increasing food literacy, reducing food demand, and implementing sustainability business awards. Initiatives such as zero-waste restaurants are paving the way for mainstream changes in reducing food waste, thereby addressing climate change, increasing food availability and helping to alleviate hunger and malnutrition worldwide. Full article

The ever deepening population aging has brought opportunities and challenges to the continued expansion of tourism consumption in China. We explore the impact of population aging on household tourism consumption, by using the data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) in 2014, 2016 and 2018. We found that population aging has a negative mediating effect on household tourism consumption by reducing household economic conditions. The improvement of health status of the elderly and Internet use have a significant positive moderating effect on the impact of population aging on household tourism consumption, but intergenerational care have no such effect. The results of the heterogeneity analysis show that the negative impact of population aging on household tourism consumption in urban areas is greater than that in rural areas, and the negative impact of population aging on household tourism consumption of families with the old-old elderly is greater than that of families with the young-old elderly. The conclusions of this article provide important references for activating tourism consumption in China in the context of population aging. Full article

The quick development of industrial sectors, tourism, and agriculture, which coincided with human habitation in cities, has led to the degradation of environmental qualities. Thus, a detailed plan is required to balance the development and environmental conservation of urban areas to achieve sustainability. This paper uses the environmental carrying capacity (i.e., ecological footprint and biological capacity) model to estimate ecological sustainability and achieve the desired balance. The results reveal that problems, such as unbalanced land development, the destruction of protected areas, and changes in land use in favor of industrial and residential development, persist in the area under study. Additionally, the studied area has been facing an ecological deficit since 1992. If this trend continues, the area will lose its chance for ecological restoration by 2030, when the ecological deficit reaches −3,497,368 hectares. The most important indicators in the ecological footprint were resource consumption in industries, water consumption in agriculture, and pollution generation from industries and household consumption. Therefore, in a sustainable scenario, the ratio of these indicators was changed based on Alborz’s development policies. In order to achieve ecological balance in the study area, short-, medium-, and long-term scenarios were proposed, as follows: (a) preventing the ecological deficit from reaching the critical threshold by 2030, (b) maintaining the ecological deficit at the same level until 2043, and (c) bringing Alborz to ecological balance (bringing the ecological deficit to zero) by 2072. Full article

The economic importance of sport has been developing from several methodological origins. Most economic research into the sport economies develops indicators for gross value added (GVA), employment and consumer spending. A further elucidation of the benefits of the sport economy relates to well-being outcomes, either from sport participation or from sport spectating. The added value of this research is that it estimates sport consumer spending in Lithuania into two distinctive strands: active participation (e.g., participating in sport or fitness) and passive participation (e.g., attending sport events). The aim of this research is to link the consumer spending results to the GVA and employment results of the Sport Satellite Account and elucidate the main characteristics of the sport economy and how these are affected by the COVID-19 epidemic. Analysis of the scientific literature, a survey sample in Lithuania consisting of 3506 respondents who spent part of their household budget on sports activities (active or passive), and a specific method of analysis were developed and applied in this research. The research results show that consumer expenditure in sport is divided into passive and active with percentage shares of 17% and 83%, correspondingly. Sport consumption overall accounts for 2.2% of total consumption in Lithuania. Most elements of consumer spending in the passive and active categories are associated with welfare effects. The importance of the analytical framework is that we can explicitly differentiate among categories such as tourism for participation and tourism for spectating, which are associated with different well-being effects. The pandemic affected 53.7% of active sport consumption, a smaller percentage than in the case of passive participation (67.4%). Full article

Even though international travel restrictions are being used to keep the COVID-19 pandemic under control, these measures cannot be considered as long-term solutions to the ongoing crisis. Limitations on traveling activities have tremendous adverse consequences on a country’s economy, particularly leading in radically expanding economic downturn and a shrinking tourism industry. To overcome this hardship, several countries have eased COVID-19 travel restrictions. However, there are still questions concerning the benefit to society as the impact assessment of this implementation transmitting to an economy has not been explicitly investigated. In response to this, we aim to assess the impacts of this implementation as to provide a guideline to global countries for their future adoption. By calculating the output and household income multipliers from the tourism input–output table, this study utilizes a case study from Thailand to indicate that prolonging the full mobility restrictions of international tourists, which results in a yearly loss of revenue in Thai tourism industry, would cost country production up to 144.97 billion USD and up to 45.4 billion USD for loss of household income. When international travel limitations were relaxed, production and household damage would fall to 142.24 billion USD (+1.88%) and 44.7 billion USD (+1.54%), respectively. At individual sectors level, our calculation identified that the most damage of production activities would exist in public utility, agriculture, and food manufacturing sectors. In the perspective of household income, those in the agricultural sector would have greatest impact. This impact results from the Thai tourism industry positioned as a buyer in an economy, having most impact on sectors selling their products or inputs to the tourism industry. As suggested by the input–output multipliers, we emphasize that strengthening the resilience of tourism-related sectors and reforming the tourism industry in relation to potential consumption and production patterns are critical for sustainable tourism development. Full article

The current paper presents a methodological framework that is able to evaluate the carrying capacity of protected areas where various human activities, apart from recreation and tourism, take place. The proposed framework converts the energy and product consumption into land required to satisfy those needs (Ecological Footprint) and compares them with the current land uses and available land (Biocapacity), in order to calculate carrying capacity. To facilitate the evaluation, an algorithm that calculates the Ecological Footprint, the Biocapacity, and the Carrying Capacity of the protected area under study by introducing 48 inputs was developed. The inputs were related to the evaluation of individual indicators assessing energy and product consumption of human activities such as households, tertiary sector, municipal buildings, public lighting, private and public transportation, and tourism. A new unit is introduced, the “equivalent person,” since the anthropogenic activities within the boundaries of the protected area contribute in a dissimilar way to the total land requirements. The framework is applied, as case study, in the National Park of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace (NPEMT), Greece, with a view to validate and improve its applicability. Within the NPEMT, habitats of significant biodiversity and ecological value are in coexistence with extensive human activities (urban, rural, tourist, light industrial). The study area covers up to approximately 73,000 ha and its population is estimated at about 29,000 people. The Carrying Capacity of the NPEMT according to the current consumption patterns was estimated at 39,193 equivalent residents, which was higher than the current equivalent residents (36,960), indicating a potential for tourism development at the NPEMT. The Ecological Footprint of the NPEMT was estimated at 181,324 Gha or 4.9 Gha/pers_eq, slightly higher than the European mean (4.69 Gha/pers_eq). Among activities, households and private transportation (with approximately 79% and 10%, respectively), among land use, agriculture, livestock, and CO₂ emissions (with approximately 36%, 30%, and 30%, respectively), and among products, beef, fruits/vegetables, and beverages (with approximately 22%, 15%, and 14%, respectively) were the main contributors of the total Ecological Footprint of the NPEMT. The area of the NPEMT is able to meet the needs of its population provided that the consumption patterns will be stable. The results encourage the expansion of tourism development, as the tourism activity within the NPEMT is limited compared to other adjacent domestic destinations. Full article

As the dominant form of rural tourism (RT) in China, Nong Jia Le (NJL) has made it possible for local farm households to benefit. In this article, a four-step strategy based on binary logistic regression was introduced to identify the most important factors influencing the participation of farm households in NJL. Next, a comparative study based on data from two NJL communities was conducted to test the approach and identify the most important influential factors as well as the differences. The results showed that the approach could identify the optimal model and the most influential factors in different rural communities. The comparative study indicated that for Pinglou Village, the most influential factors were “education years” and “gender ratio”, while in Baozi Village, the three most influential factors were “education years”, “consumption level”, and “land area”. Implications were put forward to improve the level of participation and hospitality of NJL. Full article

The objective of this paper was to investigate, with respect to the case of Mexico, the relationship between international tourism and the magnitude of poverty during the period of 1980–2017, through the use of an autoregressive distributed lags (ARDL) cointegration model with a structural break. The econometric results obtained in this paper indicate that there is a long-term relationship between international tourism and the reduction of poverty. It was found that for every 1% increase in international tourism, household consumption per capita increases 0.46% (and, therefore, poverty decreases). In the short term, it was found that a 1% increase in international tourism leads to a 0.11% increase in household consumption per capita (a decrease in poverty). The coefficient of the error correction model indicates that 23.9% of any movement into disequilibrium is corrected within one year. To corroborate these results, a Toda–Yamamoto Granger causality test was carried out, indicating a unidirectional causality relationship from international tourism towards the reduction of poverty. Full article

This article explores the relationship between the spatial concentration of short-term rentals in Lisbon’s historic center and the phenomena of uneven development and tourism gentrification. By providing quantitative and qualitative evidence of the uneven geographic distribution of tourist apartments within the municipality of Lisbon, it contributes to the study of the new processes of neoliberal urbanization in the crisis-ridden countries of Southern Europe. It argues that the great share of whole-home rentals and the expansion of the short-term rental market over the housing stock are symptoms of the commodification of housing in the neoliberal city. Due to the loss of consumption capacity by the Portuguese society amid crisis and austerity, real estate developers target external markets and local households must compete for access to a limited housing stock with tourists and other temporary city users. The subsequent global rent gap stimulates the proliferation of vacation rentals at the expense of the supply of residential housing, fueling property prices and jeopardizing housing affordability. With Portugal being a peripheral member of the EU and the Eurozone, the vulnerability of local households to the impacts of tourism gentrification is aggravated by the remarkable income gap with their counterparts of the core. Full article

The need to improve the accuracy of carbon emission measurements is a major issue which the tourism industry must resolve in order to reduce adverse impacts on climate change and the environment. This study established a detailed consumption list based on household survey data and calculated the carbon emissions of accommodation and services of the rural tourism industry of Mount Qingcheng using the input–output and lifecycle methods. Further, it analysed the key factors affecting carbon emissions. The results indicate that within the surveyed area, carbon emissions from accommodation and services amounted to 30.27 kg CO₂/per person per day; these emissions were primarily from indirect sources, which accounted for 74.99% of the total emissions. Emissions from construction and production of durable goods accounted for 13.08% and 21.58% of the total emissions. The omission of these sources of carbon emissions was the primary reason for the carbon emission levels of the tourism industry being underestimated previously. For each additional 10,000 yuan in revenue, accommodation and related services of the rural tourism industry emit an additional 1412.08 kg of CO₂. This is higher than the level of carbon emissions of the agriculture industry, but lower than those of the processing and manufacturing industries. Tourist consumption behaviours and types of tourism operations are important factors affecting carbon emissions. Effective emission reduction strategies include guiding tourist consumption behavioural changes, optimizing tourism operation portfolios, and extending the service life of constructions and durable goods. Full article

The European Mediterranean coastline has experienced major tourism-related urbanization since 1960. This is a dynamic that has led to increased spending on water consumption for urban and tourism-related uses. The objective of this paper is to define and to analyze how domestic water consumption in the city of Alicante evolved between 2000 and 2013. Real billing figures for individual households were analyzed according to the type of housing and the income level of the occupants. The conclusions drawn show that consumption fell over the period studied, and that there are different patterns in water expenditure depending on the type of housing and the inhabitants. Full article