Greenhouse gas emissions from tourist activities in South Tyrol

Abstract

Tourism is a non-negligible source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Using South Tyrol (ST) – a small region with a tourism-intensive economy situated in the North of Italy – as a case study, this article discusses a multiregional input–output (MRIO) framework for calculating the direct and indirect emissions embodied in tourist consumption of goods and services at a subnational level. Compared to more standard single-region implementations of the input–output approach, MRIO analysis offers a more accurate depiction of the amount of emissions, that is, embodied in imports, because it acknowledges that in the modern economy supply chains often stretch across multiple borders and that the carbon intensity of production can vary widely from one location to another. Operationalizing the framework has become relatively straightforward since a number of new global MRIO databases have become available in recent years. Furthermore, the analysis could easily be extended to other environmental externalities of tourism, where the model’s capability to explicitly account for spatial spillovers might also be of interest. The modelling exercise at the heart of the article suggests that, over the course of 2010, the process of producing the goods and services consumed by tourists in ST resulted in 1092 kt CO2e of GHGs being emitted into the atmosphere. This is equivalent to average emissions of 191 kg CO2e per overnight visitor, 38 kg CO2e per night or 0.316 kg per euro of tourist expenditure. Direct emissions account for about one-fourth of the total. Almost four-fifths of total emissions appear to be the result of productive activities sited outside ST itself.

Reformulating the tourism-extended environmental Kuznets curve: A quantile regression analysis under environmental legal conditions

“…The relationship between environmental conditions and tourism activity is widely studied in the literature. This connection is documented by several empirical studies considering different environmental quality measures and tourism development indicators (Becken and Hay, 2007; Black, 2004; Bojanic and Warnick, 2019; Cai, 2016; Giannoni and Maupertuis, 2007; Gössling et al, 2002; Høyer, 2000; Katircioglu et al, 2018a; Scott, 2011; Scott et al, 2012, 2019; Tang and Ge, 2018; Tovar and Lockwood, 2008; Wang and Wang, 2018). From a theoretical point of view, Gupta and Dutta (2016) develop the more recent dynamic model of a developing economy where environmental quality and capital stock accumulate over time and where tourism development raises the level of capital stock and national income but lowers the quality of the environment, leading to a relative contraction of the labor-intensive tourism sector.…”

productive interdependence of tourist activities in Brazil

“…Using a multiregional input-output model, Cai (2016) analyzed the impact of greenhouse gas emissions resulting from tourism activities in South Tyrol, a tourist region in northern Italy. The main results showed that in 2010, the production of goods and services consumed by tourists resulted in emissions of 1092 kt CO2e, which corresponds to average emissions of 38 kg CO2e per night or 0.316 kg per euro spent on tourist products and services.…”

Framework for accounting for tourism carbon emissions in China: An industrial linkage perspective

“…Existing studies on tourism carbon emissions have yielded fruitful results, and many studies have conducted a series of empirical analyses on carbon emissions from tourism transportation (Becken, 2002;Filimonau and Hogstrom, 2017;Howitt et al, 2010;Simonsen et al, 2019), tourism accommodations (Becken et al, 2001;Filimonau et al, 2011a;Tsai et al, 2014), tourism stakeholders (Bocken and Allwood, 2012;Cadarso et al, 2015), tourism destinations, and the tourism industry (Cai, 2016;Dubois and Ceron, 2006;Sun, 2014;Zha et al, 2019a). To conclude, findings of the above studies vary greatly due to differences in analytical methodologies, sample selection, and research perspective, whereas many studies have confirmed that tourism transportation, accommodations, and catering have proved to be the main sources contributing to the increase in tourism carbon emissions (Go ¨ssling et al, 2015;Higham et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2016) Tourism often includes transportation, accommodations, catering, sightseeing, and other activities.…”