Salvatore Bimonte

The evolutionary game between tourist and resident populations and Tourist Carrying Capacity

Tourism implies the encounter and interaction of two non-homogeneous populations, possibly further internally structured into like-minded communities. Its sustainability, although still poorly defined, depends upon the type of such interaction and its evolution. This is why we believe that the theoretical representation of the problem has to occur within a game theory framework. This paper begins to investigate this uncharted, perhaps novel, idea. Moreover, building on existing literature, it discusses the impact of such an approach on one of the key concept that has been developed to assess the local impact of tourism, i.e. Tourism Carrying Capacity.

Model of Growth and Environmental Quality. A New Evidence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve

Recent empirical studies have made evident the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between environmental quality and per capita income level, defined Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). Different kind of environmental indicators have been used so far to test the EKC hypothesis. This paper empirically tests the hypothesis of the EKC existence using a new version of the curve. It studies the relationship between per capita income and the percentage of Protected Area (PA) within national territory. As it will be show, this allows to by-pass some problems faced with the traditional version of the curve. The primary aim of this paper is to demonstrate that, no matter how sustainable development is defined, it crucially depends on the characteristics of the growth model that a country follows. It does hypothesize that economic growth is a necessary condition in order to better address environmental issues. But it also stresses that development, to be sustainable, needs a mix of new technologies, environmental policies, widespread information and social participation. Contrary to other studies that are mainly concerned with the calculation of the income threshold level, this paper is more concerned with the calculation of the environmental quality threshold level. It demonstrates that participation, as defined in the paper, determines the minimum level of environmental quality a country is willing to accept, that is, the level of environmental quality at which growth starts to be beneficial for the environment. The paper highlights that if the transition point is determined by income level, participation determines the environmental quality corresponding to that point.

Tourism, residents’ attitudes and perceived carrying capacity with an experimental study in five Tuscan destinations

This paper starts from the idea that tourism is an encounter of at least two non-homogeneous populations: residents and tourists. Their interaction may trigger conflicts and a population dynamics whose results are difficult to foresee. It follows that the sustainability of tourism depends simultaneously upon the sustainable use of local resources and the minimisation of the costs of conflict between the populations involved. The latter also depend on attitudes and perceptions that distinct groups of residents have toward tourism and other groups in their community. This issue is investigated within the tourism carrying capacity framework. The paper analyses both theoretically and empirically the likely outcomes of conflicts between distinct groups of residents. It presents and discusses the results of a research carried out in five famous tourist destinations in Tuscany, with a high number of tourists and seasonality of tourist flows. The main goals are to analyse how distinct groups of residents, characterised by different levels of involvement in tourism-related activities, perceive the tourism phenomenon, and to check whether there exists a latent or potential ground for conflicts between groups of residents. Contrary to expectations, the results portray communities with a high level of social acceptability toward tourism and an apparent lack of current conflict.

Happiness and Outdoor Vacations Appreciative versus Consumptive Tourists

Recently particular attention has been devoted to the relationship between leisure activities and subjective well-being. Less attention has been dedicated to tourism as a life satisfaction domain, despite it being one of the most relevant leisure activities. The aim of this article is to contribute to expanding this line of investigation. Building on the Dunlap and Heffernan hypothesis and employing activity-based segmentation, it verifies to what extent environmental attitudes are related to activities that tourists perform during their vacation, and whether a relationship exists between the activities performed and life satisfaction. The hypothesis is that tourists involved in more appreciative activities are normally more concerned about the environment, more beneficial for host territories, and happier. The article demonstrates that a positive association exists between these aspects and the way tourists “use” nature.

Environmental Policy Options in the Multi-regimes Framework

In this paper we extend the multi-regime framework to variables involved in the debate on economic growth and environmental quality, starting from a reexamination of the so-called Environmental Kuznets Curve. The aim is to discuss the double convergence hypothesis that implicitly stems from a recent line of research. According to it, some stylized facts would support the almost paradoxical hypothesis that economic growth produce not only cross-countries or regions convergence in per capita output, but also in (the demand of) environmental quality.

Instruments of Structural Policies for Tourism Sustainability

The point of departure of our analysis is that tourism is the encounter of two populations, a temporary as opposed to a permanent resident on a given territory (Bimonte 2006; Bimonte and Punzo 2006; Smith 1989). Their needs, interests and expectations not necessarily being either convergent or even just similar (Hardy et al. 2002), heterogeneity has to be taken into account as a fundamental analytical feature. Moreover, encounter in a given ‘destination’ implies an added demand to share local resources from the part of the visitors (in the language of biology, acting like invaders), and the residents’ territory has to ‘double up’ and perform an additional, or even a new principal role of, other people’s temporary home. Local resources have a record of locally historical usages (hence, basically, they are to be accounted as heritage goods), but at one point they have drifted into the sphere of interest of (mostly) leisure-motivated visitors.

Tourism Development As a Resident-Tourist Exchange Process: an Economic Theoretic Interpretation

Many attemps have been made to theoretically base research in tourism development. However, a discernible bias towards residents’ perceptions exists. Since tourism involves the meeting of (at least) two populations, residents’ perception ha to be analysed as part of an exchange process where hosts and guests are both considered. This paper presents and partially develops the Exchange Economic Model implemented by Bimonte and Punzo (Tour Manage 55:199–208, 2016) to investigate the possible scenarios and dynamics that tourism development may imply. The theoretical framework takes an economic perspective and assumes that agents’ preferences are endogenous. This means that the population’s interactions and experiences influence guests’ and/or hosts’ attitudes and opinions, which may in turn cause structural changes in individuals’ preferences. As a consequence, populations may split and inter- and/or intra-community conflict may arise that affects individual quality of life (QOL). The paper addresses this issue theoretically, suggesting some possible solutions.

Capital in the Twenty-First Century: Reinterpreting the fundamental contradiction of capitalism

ABSTRACT At a theoretical level this article discusses Piketty’s hypothesis that the distribution of income and wealth tends to become more concentrated over time when the rate of return on capital is greater than the growth rate of real output. We develop a post Keynesian model of growth and distribution showing that once capital is differentiated from wealth, the increase in income and wealth concentration actually occurs when the rate of valorization of financial and real estate assets is greater than the growth rate of real output, and that this situation may be triggered by financial liberalization.

Contingent behaviour method in the evaluation of externalities: odour emission in a selection and composting centre

Recent regulation on waste fees establishes the change from tax to tariff to guarantee the global covering of costs of collection and selection services. However, the waste law refers only to management and investment costs without including the external costs (such as externalities). For this reason, the system of relative prices is distorted. In this paper, we focus attention on one particular externality: the odour due to waste treatment and we estimate the damage produced by a selection and composting centre. In the literature, we can find different hedonic price and contingent valuation studies that aim to estimate individual willingness to pay (WTP) to improve air quality reducing contaminants with, direct or indirect, effects on human health. However, few studies focus on reversible externalities, such as odour. Therefore, this study intends to improve the literature on this area and, based on the authors knowledge, it is the first attempt to estimate the WTP to reduce odour emissions due to a selection and composting centre. Considering the peculiar case study, we produce our estimates with the relatively new method of Contingent Behaviour.