Abstract
This special issue contains a selection of papers originally presented at the 7th Conference of the International Association for Tourism Economics (IATE), held at Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina between 3rd and 6th of September 2019. IATE is the leading independent global community for the discussion, exchange, and development of knowledge in the field of Tourism Economics (www.tourism-economics.net). Since its constitution in 2007, the association has collaborated with universities around the world to organize biannual conferences such as those hosted by the University of Balearic Islands (2007), Chiang Mai University (2009), Bournemouth University (2011), University of Ljubljana (2013), Hong Kong Polytechnic University (2015), and University of Bologna (2017).
The 7th edition was held, for the first time, in America, and more specifically, in a Latin American country, which represents a milestone in the association’s aim to gather researchers interested in the application of economic knowledge to tourism. The event was jointly organized by the Economic Research Institute, the Department of Economics, and the Department of Tourism of the Universidad Nacional de La Plata. With over a century of experience, this institution is a pioneer in advanced studies and the promotion of cultural, artistic, and scientific developments. The conference was sponsored by Tourism Economics Journal and STR-SHARE center.
Out of the 140 submissions that were received and blindly assessed by two members of the Scientific Committee, a total of 94 were accepted and presented during the event. This meant the presence, during the conference, of more than 170 participants from 35 different countries. Tourism Economic modelling was the most addressed theme covered throughout the 26 sessions of the six parallel thematic groups. The nurtured program included also five Keynote Lectures which addressed the following topics: Reflections on Research Trends in Tourism Economics by Raffaele Scuderi (Kore University of Enna and Tourism Economics), Free Data available for Research by Steve Hood (STR), Economic Analysis of Public Investments in Tourism by Onil Banerjee (Inter-American Development Bank); Economic growth, development and tourism performance: a comparative analysis for Latin America by Gabriel Brida (Universidad de La República, Uruguay); Establishing Causality – The Role of Economic Theory in Empirical Research by Haiyan Song (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China). The conference also included two round-tables of analysis and debate: Perspectives of Tourism in Argentina (with stakeholders from the public and academic sectors, chaired by Natalia Porto); and Research and Analytics (with STR experiences, chaired by Steve Hood).
This special issue gathers those papers that were revised and adapted after the conference feedback and followed all the strict submission standards of Tourism Economics Journal. Eighteen manuscripts follow the initial requirements and were subject to a double-blind review process, which included several iterations. The next paragraphs summarize, in alphabetic order, the five papers that successfully followed all the steps and achieve a complete acceptance recommendation by all reviewers and editors.
Luna (2022) illustrates the application of spatial principal components analysis to tourism georeferenced data. The author, affiliated to the Universidad Nacional de Cordoba (Argentina), analyses the spatial pattern of tourist activities to characterize the departments of Cordoba’s province according to the participation of these activities in the value-added of tourism. In terms of contributions, the paper provides statistics for multidimensional spatial data, and her results provide elements necessary for appropriately defining local development strategies.
Mayer et al. (2022) presents a collaboration between Universidade Federal Fluminense and University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. The paper, grounded in behavioural economics, challenges consumers’ behaviour rationality by examining two experimental studies with 561 leisure travellers. In particular, they consider the effects of presenting choices from high standard options which might be downgraded, or from low-standard initial settings to be upgraded. The initial hypothesis, based on previous studies, is that consumers tend to choose more options and spend more money when they begin the choice process from a complete set of options (downgrade/delete framing) than when they start choosing from a more basic set of options (upgrade/add framing). Interestingly, the results strongly support the hypothesis and proved that cognitive load does not act as a moderating effect. Therefore, the authors indicate that the emotional and hedonic aspects of tourism might exacerbate that irrational behaviour.
The paper Moreira Gregori et al. (2022) studies the main determinants of residents’ perception towards tourism and tourists, considering specifically the case of a mature and mass-tourism destination. The authors, from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain), frame their conceptual approach on the social exchange theory and estimate seven ordinal logit models on a residents’ stratified random sample. They consider specifically the perception towards the tourists’ purchasing power, general behaviour, and respect for the environment. The article contributes empirically shedding some light on the complex phenomenon of residents’ perception towards tourism and tourists.
Another paper under the umbrella of behavioural economics is Ohe (2022), with authorship affiliated to Tokyo University of Agriculture (Japan). It evaluates, theoretically and empirically, how occupational identity is formed and generates differences in efficiency of farm activity focusing on educational dairy farms (EDF) that provide educational services to visitors. Using data envelopment analysis and financial data collected by the author’s survey of farms located around the Tokyo Metropolitan area, a bilateral slacks-based measure (SBM) model and Super SBM model were applied. The article investigates farmers` tourism-oriented diversification from the perspective of identity by incorporating the concepts of behavioural economics. The results revealed that those farmers who engage in processing milk products and direct selling have higher efficiency than those who do not. This is because having an enlarged identity that provides a wider perspective on farm activity enables these farmers to create demand and reduce marginal costs. Educational tourism activity by dairy farmers contributes to farm diversification, efficient farm resource management, and can nurture a new business opportunity. Identity can be a crucial factor in building rural entrepreneurship in tourism.
Finally, the paper written by Pratt (2022), from the University of South Pacific (Fiji) explores the issues regarding what items passengers are entitled to take from their flight or hotel rooms. This is a novel and useful topic in research, not only regarding the economic value of these items which represents a direct economic loss to these tourism businesses but also because of there is a clear lack of studies on the topic. Through 538 completed questionnaires captured via an in-person intercept method in commonly frequented tourist hot spots in Hong Kong, this research assesses the self-reported incidence of tourists taking items from hotels and airlines and investigates the relationship between tourists taking both free and not complimentary items and self-reported ethical tourist behaviour. . The incidence of theft is relatively high for some items, but tourists generally know which items they are entitled to take, and which they are not. There are three segments of tourists in terms of their self-reported behaviour of taking items from hotel rooms and off flights: honest, impulsive, and habitual. The paper address that unethical behaviour is observed from time to time, and this research further adds to the body of knowledge in the area of customer misbehaviour.
To conclude, during the last two decades the tourism economics approach has strengthen remarkably building on the shoulders of early researchers that consolidate the Tourism Economic journal, and promote the creation of IATE. In a sense, even if journal’s readers and authors, and IATE participants and members might have their own specialities, there is a “common language” in the topics and methods of many of the papers that explain the success of the journal and the association. The tourism industry will survive to the challenges of COVID-19 pandemic. And there will be nothing but more need to apply serious scientific economic analysis to the particularities of tourism activity.