Managing tourism emissions through optimizing the tourism demand mix: Concept and analysis

Ya-Yen Sun; Pei-Chun Lin; James Higham

doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2020.104161

Managing tourism emissions through optimizing the tourism demand mix: Concept and analysis

Tour Manag. 2020 Dec:81:104161. doi: 10.1016/j.tourman.2020.104161. Epub 2020 Jun 6.

Authors

Ya-Yen Sun¹, Pei-Chun Lin², James Higham³

Affiliations

¹ The University of Queensland, St Lucia Campus, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia.
² Department of Transportation & Communication Management Science, National Cheng Kung University, No.1, University Road, Tainan City, 70101, Taiwan, ROC.
³ Department of Tourism, The University of Otago, 362 Leith Street, North Dunedin, Dunedin, 9016, New Zealand.

Abstract

Carbon mitigation strategies are an urgent and overdue tourism industry imperative. The tourism response to climate action has been to engage businesses in technology adoption, and to encourage more sustainable visitor behaviour. These strategies however are insufficient to mitigate the soaring carbon footprint of tourism. Building upon the concepts of optimization and eco-efficiency, we put forward a novel carbon mitigation approach, which seeks to pro-actively determine, foster, and develop a long-term tourist market portfolio. This can be achieved through intervening and reconfiguring the demand mix with the fundamental aim of promoting low carbon travel markets. The concept and the analytical framework that quantitatively inform optimization of the desired market mix are presented. Combining the "de-growth" and "optimization" strategies, it is demonstrated that in the case study of Taiwan, great potential exists to reduce emissions and sustain economic yields. The implications for tourism destination managers and wider industry stakeholders are discussed.

Keywords: Eco-efficiency; Goal programming; Market mix; Mitigation; Optimization; Tourism carbon emissions.