1,721,155 research outputs found
Park visitors vs beach tourists: a comparative study in an Italian coastal region
No full textThis study investigates and discusses the controversial question of whether nature-based tourists (NBTs) are more sensitive to socio-cultural and environmental resources, have different attitudes toward local products and more positive economic effects on host communities and destinations than beach tourists (BTs). In order to test these aspects, a simultaneous comparative analysis of these two types of tourist based on an a priori and activity-based segmentation was carried out. Data was collected by questionnaire at two sites in the Maremma (a costal area in southern Tuscany, Italy), each specific to the type of tourist investigated. In line with the findings of other studies, the results confirm that NBTs are older, more educated, more affluent, and more often employed in professional occupations than BTs. They also confirm the hypothesis that NBTs are more sensitive to environmental quality and have a more positive socio-economic impact. This study likewise highlights the strong role played by psychographic information in explaining tourist behavior. Three innovative findings concerning the relationship between income, education, personal commitment to the environment and tourist type are discussed at the end
Information Access, Income Distribution, and the Environmental Kuznets Curve
No full textRecent empirical studies have tested the hypothesis of an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) focusing primarily on the relationship between per capita income and certain types of pollutant emissions. Given the stock-nature of many pollution problems, emissions only partially account for the environmental impacts. Moreover, almost all of the studies have given consideration to little more than income levels as explanatory variables. This paper empirically tests the hypothesis of the EKC existence for a stock-sensitive indicator, that is, the percentage of protected area (PA) within national territory. It does theorize that economic growth is a necessary condition in order to better address environmental issues. But it also stresses that other variables (income distribution, education, information accessibility) may play a fundamental role in determining environmental quality. Contrary to other studies that mainly focus on the calculation of the income level corresponding to the transition point, this paper is more concerned with the calculation of environmental quality corresponding to that transition point, that is, the minimum level of environmental quality that a country is willing to accept. This paper highlights the idea that if the transition point is determined primarily by income level, social policies determine the level of environmental quality corresponding to that point
An Algorithm for Optimal Pigouvian Taxes Without Benefits Data
No full textThe Pigouvian prescription to internalize external diseconomies and to achieve the optimum social equilibrium is well known: a unit tax on polluting activities equal to the marginal social damage arising at the after-tax optimal level of activity. If an authority imposes an effluent fee on emissions equal to the marginal social damage, the resulting equilibrium is Pareto-efficient. It has not been possible to translate the Pigouvian dictum into actual because of the problem of quantifying such a tax and its heavy subjective information requirements. This makes the monetary value of the damage difficult to determine. In order to overcome this difficulty, this paper develops a different theoretical approach. The main goal is to provide the environmental authority with an algorithm which allows policy-makers to base decisions on technical data (i.e. firms' production functions) rather than on subjective information (i.e. individuals' utility functions). The paper illustrates advantages offered by this approach, providing some theoretical and practical conditions useful in calculating the optimal tax
Social scarcity and tourist's life satisfaction: An empirical and theoretical analysis
Full text linkThis paper presents the results of an analysis that compared two types of tourists who hold a different view of and interact differently with their surrounding environment. It evidenced that more consumptive and consumer-oriented tourists are normally less happy than those practising more appreciative and sharing-oriented activities. To explain the differential, it offers a theoretical interpretation based on the idea that individual choices are not autonomous and independent, and that aspects like comparisons, observability of possessions and level of competition in the reference group may dampen the effect of various correlates on people's life satisfaction
Growth and Environmental Quality: Testing the Double Convergence Hypothesis. Ecological Economics
No full textThis paper discusses the double convergence hypothesis (DCH) that the uncritical analysis of the so-called environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) implicitly implies. According to the EKC, empirical evidence would support the hypothesis that economic growth, through a deterministic sequence of phases, would produce cross-country convergence in per capita output and, as a by-product, convergence in (the demand for) environmental quality. However, factual analysis seems to reject the general hypothesis of convergence in per capita output, limiting the validity of such an assessment to the case of homogeneous groups of countries. This is why, to test the DCH, the paper focuses on the original group of OECD countries for which the economic convergence turned out to be true. This allows us to verify whether “green” β and σ convergence follows as a consequence of economic convergence. The paper also tests for a more equitable distribution of protection policies among countries. Unlike other studies, which do not make the DCH explicit and have focused on pollutant emissions, this research explicitly tests for the double convergence using, as a proxy for the demand for environmental quality, the territory set aside for protected areas. The results confirm that, for the selected homogenous group of countries, growth has accompanied the demand for environmental quality. This happens both in terms of conditional and stochastic convergence
The evolutionary game between tourist and resident populations and Tourist Carrying Capacity
No full textTourism 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
Veni, vidi, ICI. Esiste un trade-off tra pianificazione urbanistica e finanza locale?
No full textL’imposta sugli immobili in Italia è da tempo al centro del dibattito politico elettoralistico. L’introduzione dell’ICI prima e dell’IMU poi ha sviluppato anche un dibattito scientifico che, però, si è prevalentemente focalizzato sugli aspetti equitativi e distributivi dell’imposta o sugli effetti di competizione territoriale. Nessuno studio, invece, ha testato l’impatto dell’imposta sull’offerta e/o domanda di abitazioni. A vent’anni dall’introduzione dell’ICI, il presente lavoro intende avviare una riflessione sul tema. In particolare, seguendo un impianto metodologico consolidato in letteratura, esso mira a verificare se l’introduzione dell’ICI abbia o meno avuto un impatto sull’elasticità dell’offerta di nuovi fabbricati e se, paradossalmente, la sua introduzione non abbia favorito, piuttosto che ostacolato, il consumo di suolo in Italia. In altre parole, partendo da un’ipotesi di lavoro ben definita, la ricerca vuole verificare se una delle conseguenze, non prevista, della decentralizzazione fiscale in Italia sia stata la creazione di una perversa alleanza tra controllati e controllori, il cui risultato è stato una velocizzazione del cambio di destinazione d’uso dei suoli e, quindi, della loro impermeabilizzazione
The Effect of Growth and Corruption on Soil Sealing in Italy: A Regional Environmental Kuznets Curve Analysis
No full textThis paper analyses and looks more closely at the empirical debate regarding the Income Elasticity Hypothesis postulated in relation to the Environmental Kuznets Curve, and the impact of corruption on the relationship between growth and environmental impact, measured in terms of soil sealing, as proxied by the number of Building Permits issued by public authorities. It postulates that when current private rent is high compared to perceived social costs and a large enough minority benefits from the rules, the EKC does not emerge and public intervention fails to perceive social optimality. To validate this hypothesis, we run a panel data regression model based on data from all Italian regions. Results confirmed the hypothesis evidencing a U-shaped relationship, i.e. a detrimental relationship between income and environmental impact/quality. It also demonstrated that this is contingent on the level of corruption. The latter affects the position and the shape of the inverted EKC, speeding up the exploitation process. It shows that the higher the income, the higher the effect of corruption on the environment. Therefore, it advocates caution against any simplistic inference from EKC
Exploring biophysical approaches to develop environmental taxation tools: Envitax, to face the "new scarcity"
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