Perceived Diversity of Complex Environmental Systems: Multidimensional Measurement and Synthetic Indicators

The general attitude towards the sustainable management of environmental resources is evolving towards the implementation of ‘participatory’ (as opposed to the classical ‘command and control’) and, especially at local scale, ‘bottom up’ (as opposed to the classical ‘top down’) approaches. This progress pushes a major interest in the development and application of methodologies able to ‘discover’ and ‘measure’ how environmental systems tend to be perceived by the different Stakeholders. Due to the ‘nature’ of the investigated systems, often too ‘complex’ to be treated through a classical deterministic approach, as typical for ‘hard’ physical/mathematical sciences, any ‘measurement’ has necessarily to be multidimensional. In the present report an approach, more typical of ‘soft’ social sciences, is presented and applied to the analysis of the sustainable management of water resources in seven Southern and Eastern Mediterranean Watersheds. The methodology is based on the development and analysis (explorative factor analysis, multidimensional scaling) of a questionnaire and is aimed at the ‘discovery’ and ‘measurement’ of a latent multidimensional ‘underlying structure’ (‘conceptual map’). It is the opinion of the authors, that the identification of a set of ‘consistent’, ‘independent’, ‘bottom up’ and ‘shared’ synthetic indicators (aggregated indices) could be strongly facilitated by the interpretation of the dimensions of the emerging ‘underlying structure’.Participative Approach, Cognitive Map, Factor Analysis, Indicators of Sustainability, Sustainable Water, Management

Effects of Tourism Upon the Economy of Small and Medium-Sized European Cities. Cultural Tourists and “The Others”

The paper presents the results of the application of an Input-Output-based approach for the estimation of direct, indirect and induced effects of tourist spending on local economies, in a static partial equilibrium setting. The methodology has been successfully applied in three case studies – Bergen (Norway), Elche (Spain), Syracuse (Italy) –, in the framework of the 6th FP project PICTURE (Pro-active management of the Impact of Cultural Tourism upon Urban Resources and Economies), in order to quantify the monetary impact of cultural tourism upon urban economies. The analysis was carried out in two major steps: firstly, interviews to tourists in each case study city, in order to estimate the scale and variability of the spending patterns of different profiles of visitors (e.g., culture-driven vs. leisure tourists); secondly, application of the Input-Output model of the economy of concern (eventually re-scaling the matrix at the Region or County level) to quantify the effects of tourist expenditure on sales, income and employment for the several impacted economic sectors. Tourists driven by cultural interest are often assumed, in literature, to have a higher than average income and to spend more on holiday. The paper reports the main findings of the analysis, discussing them against the “cultural tourist” stereotype. The analysis aims at assisting local decision makers in identifying the value of different tourist typologies to their region, in understanding how different sectors of local economy and society can benefit from tourism and in determining how to maximise, or more equally redistribute, the positive impact.Tourism, Cultural Tourism, Economic Impacts, Input-Output Analysis

Impact of Cultural Tourism upon Urban Economies: An Econometric Exercise

In recent years, interest in tourism has spread rapidly throughout many small and medium European cities, which previously have not necessarily considered themselves as tourist destinations. Tourism is increasingly seen as a potential lever towards high economic growth, measured both in terms of income and employment. In the present Working Paper we report the analysis on the economic impact undertaken in the framework of the PICTURE Project, showing the results of a novel econometric exercise to statistically assess the impacts of cultural tourism upon European municipalities. More precisely the analysis aims at estimating the effects of tourism specialisation on local income and prices. The Working Paper is built as follows. Section 1 presents and discusses secondary data about tourism facts and figures, including the economic impact of tourism upon European economies, with a focus on cultural tourism. An extensive review of literature, which identifies the main categories of impacts and the currently available methodologies to assess them, is undertaken. Section 2 focuses on the state of the art. Section 3 describes the database built for the analysis, sources and variables. In order to visually represent the spatial variability of the main parameters, a series of thematic maps at NUTS 3 level(“Maps of European tourism”), using GIS (Geographical Information System) are also included in the Working Paper. Section 4 shows the results of the econometric analysis of European panel data for the estimation of the effects of tourism specialisation on both local incomes and prices. Section 5 concludes.Cultural Tourism, Economic Growth

Coalition Formation and the Ancillary Benefits of Climate Policy

Several studies found ancillary benefits of environmental policy to be of considerable size. These additional private benefits imply not only higher cooperative but also noncooperative abatement targets. However, beyond these largely undisputed important quantitative effects, there are qualitative and strategic implications associated with ancillary benefits: climate policy is no longer a pure but an impure public good. In this paper, we investigate these implications in a setting of non-cooperative coalition formation. In particular, we address the following questions. 1) Do ancillary benefits increase participation in international environmental agreements? 2) Do ancillary benefits raise the success of these treaties in welfare terms