Date of Award

6-2018

Document Type

Open Access

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

First Advisor

Therese McCarty

Language

English

Keywords

Climate Change, Tourism, Climate, Empirical Analysis, International Tourism, Economics

Abstract

Each year, billions of people visit different countries all around the world. For many of those countries, tourism is their primary industry, leading to millions of jobs and dollars in revenue. It is expected that by 2020 total International Tourism Receipts will reach 2 trillion US dollars annually. Currently, tourism employs an estimated 200 million people around the world. With the continued progression of climate change, the tourism industry is facing a newfound threat. Global temperatures and the seal level are both expected to rise significantly by the end of the century. Additionally, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted that wildfires, tropical storms, and other natural disasters will increase in size and frequency. In recent years, governments, organizations, and private citizens have increased their efforts to curtail the effects of climate change and better understand the problems associated with it. This paper uses Ordinary Least Squares regressions to identify climatic, geographic, and cultural determinants of international tourism. The results show that the relationships between temperature, precipitation, elevation, and international tourism levels are extremely complex and cannot be evaluated independently. Furthermore, changes in temperature and precipitation over the past 100 years are significant, and are connected to current levels of international tourism. Using this data to better understand seasonality and how climate and geography affects tourism will help add to the existing literature, and hopefully, help governments and organizations prepare for what the future holds.

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