Demand for the quality conservation of Venice, Italy, according to different nationalities.

This paper focuses on visitor demand for the quality conservation of Venice according to different nationalities. The vast majority of visitors to Venice are foreigners (both tourists and day-visitors) who come from all over the world. In this research they are mainly categorized as non-Italian Europeans or non-Europeans. A specific theoretical model, in which quality conservation is provided publicly and also privately through donations, is presented for nationals and for foreigners. The data are obtained from a contingent valuation survey carried out in Venice, the aim of which was to estimate visitors' willingness to donate (WTD) to the Venice flood defence programme. Demand functions are estimated by applying a twostage regression model. The authors show that the majority of visitors are willing to donate. On average, Italians and non-Europeans would donate more than non-Italian Europeans. As expected, these visitor categories have different mean WTD and different behavioural functions which are affected by attitudinal and economic variables. Bequest value is the main donation motive. Those who identify this as a donation motive, on average, state the highest WTD and the highest degree of certainty to donate. This result seems to confirm empirically the validity of the sustainable development principle applied to the management of Venice as a cultural tourist site

Social Carrying Capacity of Mass Tourist Sites: Theoretical and Practical Issues about its Measurement

Congestion is an important management problem at mass tourist sites. This essay focuses on the social carrying capacity (SCC) of a tourist site as indicator of residents' and visitors' perception of crowding, intended as the maximum number of visitors (MNV) tolerated. In case of conflict between the residents' MNV tolerated and the visitors' MNV tolerated, the policy-maker has to mediate. We consider the case in which the residents' SCC is lower than the visitors' SCC, and the site SCC is the result of a compromise between these two aspects of the SCC. This can be measured by making reference to two criteria of choice: the utility maximisation criterion and the voting rule. The use of one method rather than the other depends on the data available about the individual preferences on crowding. Assuming that individual preferences are known, a maximisation model for the computation of the site SCC is conceived. It represents the case in which the residents' SCC is the limiting factor. The site SCC is intended as the number of visitors which maximises the social welfare function. Because a local policy-maker maximises the welfare of residents, in this model visitors are represented by those residents whose welfare wholly depends on the tourism sector, while the social costs due to crowding are borne by those residents who are partially or totally independent from tourism. Nevertheless, in practice, the individual preferences about crowding are not always known. In this case, the MNV tolerated can be computed by applying the majority voting rule. It is shown that, under certain conditions, the optimum number of visitors, obtained through a maximisation model, is equal to the MNV tolerated by the majority of voters