The Importance of Adjusting for Trip Purpose in Regional Economic Analyses of Tourist Destinations

Abstract

This paper investigates the empirical importance of distinguishing visitors and their expenditures by trip purpose when estimating the tourism effects of a national park on a local economy. Accounting for trip purpose is quite important when there are two or more nearby major attractions in the same geographical area. This applies to the author's case study of Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks in the State of Wyoming, and also to other areas, such as the State of Utah's Bryce and Zion National Parks or amusement parks in the Orlando area in Florida. The authors illustrate the various types of survey questions and methods for correcting for trip purpose. In the case study, it would be quite misleading to attribute all spending by visitors to Grand Teton National Park (GTNP) in the town of Jackson, Wyoming, solely to GTNP because this would overstate employment actually attributable to the park by 3,455 jobs, or 22%. In turn, this overestimates the dependence of jobs in the Jackson economy on GTNP by 15%, incorrectly estimating it at 75% rather than the sounder figure of 60% of total jobs.

The economic impact of tourism in six German national parks

“…to account only for the tourist expenditure created in addition to the expenditure that would have occurred in the region anyway (cf. Loomis and Caughlan, 2006), we have to adjust the above values with the share of visitors with high national park affinity a for whom the national park was the primary reason to come to the region (Wall Reinius and Fredman, 2007).…”

Estimating the Economic Value and Impacts of Recreational Trails: A Case Study of the Virginia Creeper Rail Trail

“…IMPLAN (IMpact Analysis for PLANning) is a computer-based, input-output economic modelling system designed specifically to conduct economic impact analysis, which has been in use since 1979 (Taylor et al, 1992;MIG, Inc, 1999). IMPLAN is a widely applied and accepted tool for measuring the total economic impacts of recreation and tourism (Bergstrom et al, 1990;Cordell et al, 1990;English and Bowker, 1996;Loomis and Caughlan, 2006).…”

“…Examples of various expenditure apportioning approaches can be found in the literature (Bergstrom et al, 1990;Cordell et al, 1990;English and Bowker, 1996). Here, we employ a method for non-primary users similar to that used by Loomis and Caughlan (2006). For non-primary day users, we used the ratio of minutes spent on the trail to minutes in a 12-hour day (0.24).…”

Economic effects of tourism and its influencing factors

“…Some maintain that locals should be excluded as their expenditures are considered a re-circulation of preexisting income in the region (Dwyer et al 2004, p. 313 f.;Loomis, Caughlan 2006;Crompton et al 2001, p. 81). Conversely others argue that ignoring locals' expenditures will lead to an underestimate of total impacts (Johnson, Moore 1993, p. 287).…”