Thesis
Three essays in tourism economics
- Creator
- Rights statement
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 2024
- Thesis identifier
- T17163
- Person Identifier (Local)
- 201994415
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- This thesis is a collection of three chapters that seek to analyse policies aimed at tourism. Within the three chapters are developments and extensions of two different macroeconomic modelling techniques: Input-Output (IO) and Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modelling. These models have been developed and used to understand a variety of different scenarios that are applicable in the Scottish tourism context and can be adapted to other tourism regions. Chapter 2 uses a tourism-specific Input Output (IO) framework to assess the macroeconomic impacts of a tourism subsidy, considering the government's cost in imposing the subsidy. Chapter 3 considers an accommodation tax through the lens of a tourism-extended CGE model. AMOSTRAVEL is described in Chapter 3. It has been developed as a tourism-specific CGE model, including the introduction of domestic and inbound tourism categories for analysis. Chapter 4 builds on this analysis by including an environmental extension to the tourism CGE model. Chapter 4 analyses three different policies that affect tourism demand: An accommodation tax, a land transport tax and a fuel sales tax. In all three chapters, the macroeconomic effect of policies aimed at tourism is analysed through macroeconomic models. Chapter 2, titled VAT Reduction to the Accommodation Sector in Scotland: An Application of Input-Output Modelling, uses IO modelling to understand a tourism subsidy in the form of a VAT reduction specifically to the Accommodation sector. The chapter makes two distinct contributions to the literature. First, we account for the costs associated with fiscal policy at a regional level to encourage additional tourism consumption. Previous studies have assumed that policies aimed at encouraging tourism have no cost to the regional government. We show that introducing a cost unambiguously reduces economic activity, so the net effect of such a policy would depend on the increase in tourism expenditure resulting from a policy intervention. We repeat this analysis by disaggregating spending across different tourism categories. This involves a disaggregation of Scottish national accounts. Chapter 3 is titled Incorporating Tourism Heterogeneity in a Computable General Equilibrium Framework for a Small Regional Economy. CGE models are widely used to analyse changes in tourism demand. Due to their reliance on economic accounts, the models have limited detail on different categories of tourism demand and are often limited to the analysis of changes in “inbound” (i.e. non-resident) tourism demand. Such analysis, however, cannot account for the interconnections between inbound and domestic (i.e., resident) tourism, which generally is a large part of total tourism consumption. In this chapter, we outline a methodology to address these issues using a case study of Scotland. We first address these problems by using the tourism disaggregated national accounts in Chapter 1, which includes spending for five different consumption categories: domestic day visitors and overnight visitors, Great Britain day visitors and overnight, and international overnight visitors. These categories are then incorporated into AMOSTRAVEL using conventional utility functions that reflect the price-sensitive behaviour of both domestic and international tourists. We highlight the added value of our disaggregation through a variety of tourism-specific simulations and compare our approach to more traditional methods. Results from simulation and methodological implications are fundamental not only for the academic literature but also as a guide to policymakers focused on making tourism decisions. Chapter 4, titled Reducing Emissions through Fiscal Interventions and the Impacts on Tourism Spending and the Economy, assesses the environmental impacts of three potential taxes on tourism. Taxes like these will naturally have a negative impact on tourism demand but will also have negative impacts on key economic indicators such as GDP, Employment, and Household Consumption, as seen in Chapter 2. However, another important implication of these policy changes is the environmental impact. We analyse the emissions impacts of three policies aimed at tourists through environmental extensions to AMOSTRAVEL. We introduce a methodological novelty in this chapter as we include industrial emissions (emissions relating to industries in the national accounts) and consumption emissions (emissions relating to the consumption categories that are presented in the model. We find that there are different economic impacts from each of the taxes; the accommodation tax is the most negative and has the most environmental (emissions reductions) of the three taxes. Although there is no way to suggest that these results reflect reality, the results raise some interesting questions for tourism policy in balancing economic impacts vs environmental impacts.
- Advisor / supervisor
- Figus, Gioele
- Allan, Grant
- Resource Type
- DOI
- Funder
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