Carmelo J. León

The Adoption of Environmental Innovations in the Hotel Industry of Gran Canaria

Managing environmental attributes of the tourist product is increasingly important for the success of tourist destinations. The authors consider how producers manage environmental attributes in the hotel industry. An environmental quality index is formulated, based on the possible environmental measures a representative unit can adopt, given the technological frontier. Several aspects of environmental quality within the hotels influence are considered, such as the management of energy, water, solid waste, noise, and urban landscape. These measures can have effects on costs and demand. Thus their adoption represents an opportunity for firms to raise net benefits. Empirical evidence comes from a sample of hotels and apartments in Gran Canaria. Results show that the most frequently adopted environmental measures are those involving low investment and operational cost reductions. The environmental quality index is significantly determined by the category of the facilities, production capacity, integration into a larger management chain, the environmental perception of managers, and the preoccupation of clients with the environment.

Emotions and decision rules in discrete choice experiments for valuing health care programmes for the elderly

The evaluation of health care programmes is commonly approached with stated preference methods such as contingent valuation or discrete choice experiments. These methods provide useful information for policy decisions involving health regulations and infrastructures for health care. However, econometric modelling of these data usually relies on a number of maintained assumptions, such as the use of the compensatory or random utility maximization rule. On the other hand, health policy issues can raise emotional concerns among individuals, which might induce other types of choice behaviour. In this paper we consider potential deviations from the general compensatory rule, and how these deviations might be explained by the emotional state of the subject. We utilized a mixture econometric model which allows for various potential decisions rules within the sample, such as the complete ignorance, conjunctive rule and satisfactory rules. The results show that deviations from the full linear compensatory decision rule are predominant, but they are significantly less observed for those subjects with a medium emotional state about the issue of caring for the health state of the elderly. The implication is that the emotional impact of health policy issues should be taken into account when making assumptions of individual choice behaviour in health valuation methods.

A growth model for gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata)

This paper presents a growth model for gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata), which is one of the most culture species in the Mediterranean area. The model is designed by means of stochastic differential equations, and is based on previous research for other species [Modelisation de la Croissance des Poissons en Elevage, 1990]. Fish growth is assumed to be influenced by three fundamental factors: fish weight, water temperature, and ration size. The formulation incorporates fish physiology theory, requiring fewer specific parameters than other bionenergetic models. Empirical data were obtained from culture in the Canary Islands waters for a 30-month period. Some simulations were run to validate the model. Although the influence of water temperature on fish growth might need to be refined, satisfactory results are obtained. Two environmental scenarios are also examined, the “Atlantic” and “Mediterranean,” which vary in the annual cycles of water temperature. The results produce significant differences in the growth patterns between both areas, suggesting potential economic implications for the cultivation of larger commercial sizes.

The role of the water temperature in the optimal management of marine aquaculture

This paper analyses the influence of the water temperature over the optimal management of aquaculture farms. A fish growth model is presented and included in a general profit optimisation framework. Results reveal a positive influence of the average water temperature over the optimal harvesting time. The optimal ration size exhibits an uneven path with an upward phase in the warmer season followed by downward phase in winter time. An application for the seabream culture in the Mediterranean countries shows harvesting time and ration size very dependent on the water temperature and the stocking date. The risk involved with uncertainty of the environmental conditions is also estimated, which could explain the difference between the predicted optimal harvesting sizes and the real practice in commercial culture.

Consumption process and multiple valuation of landscape attributes

Abstract Environmental valuation can be seen as a process which evolves as individuals reflect on their consumption experience. In this paper we consider how environmental values could change as the subject has reached the end of the consumption process. A split sample comparison is conducted for estimating the values tourists give to a set of landscape attributes. The first subsample was taken on-site as subjects were on a tour contemplating the landscape of the island of Gran Canaria (Canary Islands). The second subsample was contacted at the airport when individuals were about to leave the tourist enclave. Since landscapes are complex environmental goods, we utilize and compare a multiple contingent valuation (CV) approach with the stated preference approach of contingent ranking. The results show that the influence of the consumption experience depends on the valuation method and the consideration of interaction effects in the model. The valuation functions were not stable across both sites for most of the models considered and some of the attributes changed their values between the two points of the consumption process. Interaction effects were more relevant with the contingent ranking model, suggesting that CV is a more limited approach in a context of multiple valuation.

Bioeconomic analysis of production location of sea bream (Sparus aurata) cultivation

This paper develops a bioeconomic model to evaluate the production of gilthead sea bream in floating cages based on two locations, the Canary Islands and the Mediterranean. The model includes four sub-models: biologic, environment, production management, and economic. The biologic sub-model contains a growth model based on this species physiology. A wide range of farm scales were considered, deriving the production and input costs for each scale and scenario. The results for average costs showed increasing returns, with a rising internal rate of return (IRR). The efficient farm size was obtained for alternative management decisions and location scenarios. The results revealed that input costs, and therefore product costs, were higher in the Canary Islands than in the Mediterranean. However, environmental conditions in the Canary Islands are shown to be more favorable than in the Mediterranean, resulting in a more rapid growth, which leads to higher returns.

A Comparison of Tourists’ Valuation of Climate Change Policy Using Different Pricing Frames

Tourism destinations are increasingly concerned about global climate change and considering to become involved in the adoption of mitigation policies that reduce global emissions. On the other hand, behavioral sciences have shown that consumers’ choices may be significantly influenced by the way that they are framed. In this article, we test the impact of alternative ways to frame the pricing of climate change policies on the values and preferences of tourists. The evidence comes from three different experiments on a proposal to mitigate climate change through a carbon offset program using both an opt-out pricing frame and in an opt-in pricing frame. The results show that the opt-out frame led to a larger probability of accepting to pay the price for a carbon offset policy proposal. The main implication is that destinations’ climate change policies should take into account the designs of the frame in which policies are posed.

Elicitation of Expert Opinion in Benefit Transfer of Environmental Goods

Benefit transfer is a method for estimating the value of environmental goods that involves the use of past information on identical or similar goods. This paper considers the extent to which benefit transfer can be based on prior distributions elicited from expert opinion. We propose two alternative methods to elicit the parameters of a prior distribution from experts on environmental valuation. An experiment is carried out on the value of National Parks in Spain. The results from the elicited distributions are compared with the information provided by onsite samples of visitors. The results indicate that individual experts made different predictions about the potential value of the policy areas that were diverse and unable to accurately predict the value for each policy site. However, the average across the elicited distributions approaches the estimated distribution with empirical data and accurately predicts the relative values for the two policy sites considered.

Correcting for Scale Perception Bias in Tourist Satisfaction Surveys

Tourist satisfaction analysis provides important information that contributes to design public and private policies in tourist services and destinations. However, the responses to tourist satisfaction scales can lead to biased results when comparing tourists from different nationalities and backgrounds, since they might use different internal scale interpretations to assess their satisfaction level in a survey. In this article, the anchoring vignette methodology is used to test and correct for scale response bias in tourist satisfaction surveys. The results of the empirical application find out that scale response is not homogeneous across tourists from different nationalities and that the correction for scale differences can lead to an evaluation of tourist satisfaction that more accurately informs and facilitates improvements in policy decisions at tourist destinations and operators.

Bayesian Analysis of Interval Data Contingent Valuation Models and Pricing Policies

The general aim of a contingent valuation survey is to elicit the willingness to pay (WTP) of respondents for some (public) commodity without a clear market price. This could be a program to protect some environmental resource or, as in our application, the access to a recreational area of particular interest. In this context, we want to accommodate the possibility of zero WTP and we need to deal with the fact that observations arise as intervals for WTP, rather than point observations. We propose a flexible Bayesian statistical analysis of WTP as a function of characteristics of the respondents that formally incorporates this structure through a mixture model. We consider model uncertainty and pay particular attention to the predictive distribution of revenue if a certain entry price were asked. The latter is an important tool for deriving pricing policies.