Bianca Biagi

Crime as tourism externality

Biagi B. and Detotto C. Crime as tourism externality, Regional Studies. This paper analyses the linkage between tourism and crime with a particular focus on the distortions generated onto criminal activities by the presence of visitors. Controlling for socio-demographic and economic variables, the contribution of tourist arrivals to different types of crimes for 103 Italian provinces and for the year 2005 are empirically investigated. The possible spillover effects of crime are taken into account by testing two spatial models (one spatial lag model and one spatial error model). The hypothesis is also tested according to which different geography of tourist destinations – that is, urban, mountain, marine, etc. – alters the impact of tourism on crime. Finally, the social cost of crime associated with tourist arrivals is measured.

The Effect of Tourism on Crime in Italy: A Dynamic Panel Approach

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that, for the case of Italy, ceteris paribus, tourist areas tend to have a greater amount of crime than non-tourist ones in the short and long run. Following the literature of the economics of crime a la Becker (Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach, 1968) and Enrlich (Participation in Illegitimate Activities: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation, 1973) and using a System GMM approach for the time span 19852003, the authors empirically test whether total crime in Italy is affected by the presence of tourists. Findings confirm the initial intuition of a positive relationship between tourism and crime in destinations. When using the level rather than the rate of total crime and controlling for the equivalent tourists (i.e. the number of tourists per day in a given destination) the effect of the tourist variable is confirmed. Overall results indicate however that the resident population has a greater effect on crime than the tourist population. Therefore, the main explanation for the impact of tourism on crime seems to be agglomeration effects.

The effect of tourism on the housing market

The aim of this chapter is to examine the way theoretical and empirical literature has looked at the effect of tourism on housing markets in resort destinations. We note that while research on tourism recognizes the effects of recreation activities on local land and housing markets, studies focusing specifically on this issue are very limited. For the purposes of the present work, we first identify the various actors/participants in housing markets and explain how they interact in the context of tourism destinations. Then, we focus on two core strands of relevant research: first, we examine the hedonic price method, as a mechanism to explore how tourism-related amenities can be “quantified” and developed into one of the variables that affect directly and indirectly (through quality-of-life considerations) house price formation in tourism destinations. In the same context, with the use of a case study, we also review an alternative way to quantify the effects of tourism, through the creation of a composite tourism index that enters directly into the house price estimation function. Second, we look at the growing literature on holiday homes and examine how demand for this type of accommodation in tourism destinations can affect the functioning of local housing markets. In this context, we examine issues of housing affordability in tourism destinations, the role of the supply side, but also the policy challenges and responses, suggested in the relevant literature.

Editorial: Special Issue on Interregional Migration

The main aim of this very first special issue to be published by Spatial Economic Analysis, is to look at the phenomenon of interregional migration and its determinants from a variety of novel perspectives and in connection with topical issues in regional science such as creativity and human capital. The different contributions also offer a comparative analysis of case studies both from North America (USA and Canada) and Europe (the Netherlands, Spain and Italy). The first paper in this special issue, by Charlotta Mellander, Richard Florida & Kevin Stolarick (2011), investigates the reasons why people decide to stay in their current locations. Building on the approach by Herzog & Schlottmann (1986) and Whisler et al. (2008) they focus in particular on the role played by perceived community satisfaction. Community satisfaction is measured using a series of subjective indicators collected via a unique survey conducted by the Gallup Organization between July and August 2006 in some 8,000 communities across all 50 US states. Using an ordered logit model, Mellander et al. show that, although the decision to stay is affected by a series of individual characteristics such as income, age, gender, education, marital status, and housing tenure, and by local economic characteristics such as job opportunities, current and future economic conditions, community satisfaction plays a dominant role. Among the many dimensions of community satisfaction analysed (quality of schools, presence of religious institutions, cultural opportunities, beauty and physical setting, climate, ability to meet other people etc.) their results show that attributes such as the beauty and physical setting of a place and the ability to meet other people in the community stand out as being the most important ones. While most migration research focuses on migrants and the factors attracting them to new locations, this paper shows that it is equally important to analyse the decision process of non-migrants and their reasons to stay in a particular community. From a policy perspective, retaining the current population is at least as vital as attracting new migrants. The paper by Margaret Rose Olfert & Mark Partridge (2011) builds on the debate surrounding the notion of ‘creative class’ (Florida, 2002). The main aim of the paper is to test whether ethnic diversity, which is consistent with the notions of tolerance and diversity à la Florida, is linked to the presence of creative workers in an area and in particular of a subset of the creative class, namely workers in cultural occupations (or culture workers). The need to focus on a narrower subset is motivated by the vast heterogeneity of workers included in the broad definition of creative class, which has been recognized also in other contributions (Comunian et al., 2010). Using data on 48 different cultural occupations for the Canadian Consolidated Census Subdivision (CCS) for the year 2006, the authors find that while there is a positive relationship between greater ethnic diversity and higher cultural occupation share in urban areas, there is no correlation in rural areas, suggesting that this connection is more related to agglomeration and urban economies rather than diversity per se. Moreover, no correlation is found between the growth in cultural occupations (between 1991 and 2006) and ethnic diversity, suggesting that once the share of cultural occupation is established, it becomes persistent over time. As a consequence, the impact of local policy interventions

Tourism and house prices in Italy A latent class approach

Evaluating the impact of tourism on housing prices is an important endeavor, but the usual empirical approach is to estimate a single regression model with house price as a function of tourism and other variables. This approach does not allow for individual heterogeneity. In this article, the authors apply a latent class model to estimate the impact of tourism activities on housing prices in Italy. In particular, they allow for three different unobservable classes or regimes, permitting the impact of tourism on house prices to differ across classes. In other words, they allow for unobservable heterogeneity. The empirical results do support the existence of three classes of house price regressions. Using two different indices of tourism activity, for certain cities (about 21–48% of the sample), increases in tourism activity increase housing prices and for other cities (8–17%) increases in tourism activity decreases housing prices. For approximately half of the sample, increases in tourism activity have no impact on housing prices.

Theoretical Advances on Interregional Migration Models

The purpose of this chapter is twofold. First, we aim to give a general overview of the main innovations, decade-by-decade, of internal migration studies from the 1970s until today. The second purpose is to highlight existing empirical research focused on interregional migration and gaps in the literature that must be addressed in the future.

Editorial: New Frontiers in Interregional Migration Research

Research on interregional migration has taken great strides in the last decades. Data quality has improved considerably, with micro-level data increasingly available. This has allowed researchers to link substantive background data, pertaining to a broad variety of life domains, to information on past migration trajectories, as well as current movements. Such data is now not only available for Western economies, but also for some developing and transition economies.

Urban Quality of Life and Capabilities: An Experimental Study

This paper proposes a way to empirically measure the impact of capabilities and functionings on the individual perception of urban quality of life. Specifically, we investigate the role played by amenities (including social interactions) and disamenities for a sample of 508 resident population of the town of Alghero (Italy). The hypothesis postulates that – ceteris paribus – UQoL is a function of amenities and disamenities that are all converted in capabilities and functionings. Capabilities are measured by four variables: presence of green, blue amenities, crime and dirtiness of the streets. Functionings are measured by three variables: frequency with which green space and social interactions are enjoyed and sport activity. The analysis is performed in two steps. In the first step, we focus on investigating whether the perception of UQoL is affected by capabilities and/or functionings, while in the second step we study whether and to what extent the individual allocation of time in daily activities such as sleeping, childcare and recreational activities affects this perception. Among others findings indicate that not enjoying amenities or not interacting with friends at all is worse than a marginal increase of both types of amenities.