Timothy J. Tyrrell

A Framework for Assessing Direct Economic Impacts of Tourist Events: Distinguishing Origins, Destinations, and Causes of Expenditures

This article outlines a standardized method for assessing direct economic expenditures and impacts associated with tourist events. The method addresses critical and often overlooked methodological issues that distinguish analysis of impacts from tourism in general and analysis of impacts from tourist events. These issues involve a common failure to account for sources, origins, destinations, and causes of expenditures. The corresponding errors in impact estimation will carry through into subsequent input-output or multiplier models and are of particular significance when one considers impacts of tourism events in regions dominated by other tourist sites or attractions, such as heavily visited coastal communities. Implications of the framework for impact estimation are illustrated using examples drawn from recent Rhode Island tourist events, including the 1997 Newport Folk Festival.

A Survey of Attitudes Toward Tourism Growth in Rhode Island

A survey of Rhode Island households, businesses and town officials was conducted in 1982 in order to pravide background information for the first Governors Conference on Tourism held in the state. The three objectives of the survey were to identify specific benefits and problems associated with tourism growth, to measure differences in attitudes held by the three groups sampled, and to identify regional differences in attitudes within the state. In order to accomplish the second and third objectives, a tourism attitude scale was developed.

The Economic Impacts of Tourism: A Special Issue

Economic impact analysis is a broad category of analytic methods including some of the most common tools for travel and tourism planning. The consensus of recent work appears to be that economic impact analysis can be an important element of the tourism planner’s toolbox but also can be subject to considerable risk of misuse and misinterpretation. This article highlights many of the issues involved in the appropriate use and interpretation of economic impact analysis and summarizes the contributions of articles included in this special issue. These articles address a wide range of topics, including the measurement of benefits and costs, modeling of indirect and induced impacts, and the testing, validation, and use of impact estimates.

Urban Green Spaces: A Study of Place Attachment and Environmental Attitudes in India

Urban green spaces are critical to urban sustainability yet receive little scientific or political attention. This study explored the effect of place attachment on environmental attitudes among urban green space users in India. Data were collected via an on-site survey administered in March 2006. Among the English-speaking subsample (n = 219; adjusted response rate 87.6%), respondents had moderate levels of place identity and place dependence and exhibited a tendency toward pro-environmental attitudes. Additionally, stronger place identity was significantly associated with greater agreement regarding the balance between humans and nature as well as with weaker support for the domination of humans over nature. No significant relationships between place identity and ecological limits or place dependence and environmental attitudes emerged. Results suggest emotional connections with places contribute toward pro-environmental attitudes. Enhancing such connections is therefore likely to lead to increased environmental care and concern.

A Dynamic Model of Sustainable Tourism

Operational definitions of tourism sustainability require details regarding what is to be sustained, for whom it is to be sustained, and the level at which it is to be sustained. This article develops a dynamic model illustrating the interrelated behavior of tourism-related economic and environmental conditions throughout time. We characterize fundamental notions of sustainable tourism from the perspectives of both a profit-maximizing tourist industry and that of permanent residents of a tourist community. The model illustrates findings relevant to the search for sustainable outcomes and characterizes potential conflicts implicit in different sustainable and nonsustainable paths. The model demonstrates that (1) in all but the most rare of circumstances, there is no single, universal sustainable optimum; and (2) a policy that maintains overly pristine environmental quality may be just as unsustainable—from the perspective of either the tourism industry or residents—as a policy that causes excessive environmental decay.

Tourism Sustainability, Resiliency and Dynamics: Towards a More Comprehensive Perspective

This paper uses insights from a basic but formal model of tourism dynamics to frame a discussion of sustainability in tourism planning, with a particular focus on the role of dynamic resilience — or the ability of social, economic or ecological systems to recover from tourism-induced stress. The paper presents a theoretical approach to model resiliency in the ecological-environmental quality, economic-fiscal quality and social-cultural quality of tourist destinations. The model also formalises the difference between actual and perceived changes in these vectors. The specific goals of the paper are to characterise a more quantitative approach towards tourism sustainability and resilience, to summarise results in the tourism literature that might contribute to initial empirical implementation of such quantitative models, and to stimulate debate regarding the potential role of such approaches in guiding tourism policy.

A Quantified Triple Bottom Line for Tourism Experimental Results

The tradition of tourism businesses and regional tourism industries is to measure their value to the host community by jobs, wages, and tax revenues even though every member of that community is affected on a daily basis through a broad variety of impacts. This article demonstrates a conceptual approach for measuring the relative importance of the major dimensions of community quality of life that can be influenced by the tourism industry in order to calculate an indication of overall impact on the well-being of community residents. Furthermore, we have formulated an example conjoint model that values this overall performance in monetary units. This model is successfully implemented using samples of college students and tourism industry professionals in the United States and Cyprus. A monetary version of triple bottom line impacts is calculated for the impacts of changes to a specific hypothetical tourism business. Recommendations are made for the extension and application of this approach to implementing sustainable tourism.

Rural Amenity Values and Length of Residency

New residents of rural communities are often assumed to have preferences for development and conservation that differ from those of longer-term residents. However, the literature offers little to quantify presumed preference heterogeneity. This article assesses whether stated preferences differ according to length of residency. Results are based on a conjoint (choice experiment) survey of Rhode Island rural residents. Heterogeneity—according to length of town residency—is modeled using dummy variables, multiplicative interactions, and Lagrangian interpolation polynomials. Results are compared across the three models, and identify a range of attributes for which willingness to pay depends on length of residency. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

Implications of a Land Value Tax with Error in Assessed Values

Land value taxation has numerous potential advantages compared to conventional property taxes on capital and land. The models that establish these advantages, however, are grounded in the unlikely assumption that land values are assessed without error. This paper demonstrates that levying taxes based on land values assessed with error is equivalent to the application of one tax rate to the true value of land and a different effective tax rate to capital. The model demonstrates that a land value tax will have at most the distortion effects of a property tax, even with the worst possible land value assessment errors. (JEL H21, H23)

Green attendees' evaluation of green attributes at the convention centre: using importance–performance analysis

For convention centre operators, managers, and meeting professionals, the current focus on green meetings is no longer a trend. Cities in the USA are seeing a boom in green attribute development at convention centres; however, little is known regarding attribute perception from an event attendee perspective. This study explored the importance and performance of 20 green attributes relevant to the meetings and events industry. An online questionnaire was administered to 115 event attendees at the Phoenix Convention Center. The survey obtained importance and performance ratings for these green attributes. Findings indicate that the green industry identified attributes that are important from an event attendee perspective. Results should be valuable to convention sales/service managers, green marketing research, and green attribute development for the meetings and events industry.