Climate change impact chains across the environment and the economy in coastal and marine destinations

Abstract

Climate change has important effects on the tourism industry, since both the supply and the demand of tourism services depend upon the quality and management of a set of environmental attributes. Within this framework, this paper has two main goals. It firstly proposes a conceptual framework for defining the channels of influence of climate change on tourism. This pivots around the notion of Impact Chains: a tool representing and summarizing the complex relationships between hazards, direct physical impacts, exposure and vulnerability. Secondly, empirical evidence for marine and coastal tourism is provided through a critical review of the available literature and applying a value transfer approach. Results show a great heterogeneity of findings and that available data do not deal with all the potential impacts of climate change in tourism, hence being unsuitable for an integrated approach to risk assessment. Among the potential available impacts, those for which there is empirical evidence which can be utilized in a value transfer context are the impacts due to loss of attractiveness of marine environments (species or landscapes), loss of comfort due to beach availability reduction, and loss of comfort due to thermal stress and heat waves. Nevertheless, the economic impacts for these three environmental threats are significant, and would imply large reductions in the number of tourists visiting tourist destinations and relevant amount of monetary damages.