Costs and benefits of environmental change: tourism industry's responses in Arctic Finland

ABSTRACT

Recent research has focused on the impacts of environmental change to tourism. In particular, the perceived costs of climate change have been increasingly studied. However, the relationship between costs and benefits resulting from the changing environmental conditions for the industry has been less examined. This paper identifies the locally observed changes in the natural and socio-economic environments and aims to analyse the financial costs and benefits to tourism businesses in two tourism-dependent communities in northern Finland. The specific focus is on adaptation and adaptive management in a tourist destination scale. Adaption is understood as an investment creating not only implementation costs, but potentially also benefits for tourism operations. Research materials were collected among tourism and tourism-related businesses through 41 semi-structured thematic interviews. Results indicate that the evaluated benefits of environmental change seem to exceed those of costs. This conforms to the on-going discourse of climate change–tourism relations associated with the Arctic region where both awareness and vulnerability to change are considered relatively high but the level of responses, i.e. adaptation, low. These results can help to further identify the most vulnerable sectors in tourism and assist entrepreneurs preparing for environmental and climate change. However, the paper concludes that while global environmental change, with specific adaptive management strategies, may create local short-term direct benefits for the industry, a long-term sustainability of tourism in the Arctic calls for mitigation responses to climate change.     

Ambitious deep energy retrofits of buildings to accelerate the 1.5°C energy transition in Canada

Scientists advise limiting global warming to 1.5°C with substantial actions by 2030. Our viewpoint argues that climate response strategies in Canada have underemphasized and underestimated the potential contribution deep energy retrofits can make to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions, leading to inadequate responses in the building sector, and that Canada can (and should) be ambitious with building retrofits over the next decade. GHG savings from building retrofits can be realized more quickly than GHG reductions from other sectors, and either deliver net cost savings or are cost‐effective when compared to other mitigation measures. Retrofits can also provide social and economic benefits, such as improved health and comfort, and lower energy costs. This paper reviews energy use and building retrofits in Canada and argues the following should be implemented: (1) focus innovation on deep energy retrofit processes, not singular retrofit actions; (2) maximize both social and environmental benefits; (3) improve data gathering and availability for analysis and delivery; (4) innovate for a process of decisions and to avoid “dropouts” during the retrofit process; and (5) focus innovation on business models that maximize benefits.     

New towns — the Indian experience

Recent government policy has enacted significant changes in the approach to training both north and south of the Border. In April 1991 the establishment of Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, along with a network of Local Enterprise Companies, marked a shift in the direction to employer‐led and locally delivered training programmes. The importance of tourism to Scotland has attracted government attention and, in anticipation of the new training network, a Tourism Training Initiative has been set up to expand the take‐up of training opportunities. This area‐based approach is welcomed but it is argued that tourist businesses, especially the small accommodation sector, have particular characteristics that have made the uptake of training traditionally a low priority. The absence of consideration of these characteristics in the design of the new employment strategies is argued to be a significant weakness.     

京津冀地区旅游业的碳排放测算与比较研究

本文借鉴"旅游消费剥离系数"概念构建了京津冀地区旅游业碳排放量的计算方法,并对京津冀三省份的旅游碳排放指标进行了比较分析。研究表明:2010-2012年京津冀地区的旅游碳排放总量持续攀升,从591.018万吨增加到696.3万吨,而旅游者的人均碳排放总量持续递减;2010-2012年北京市旅游业碳排放总量均排名首位,河北省始终最低,但是增长势头迅猛;从人均总量对比情况看,2010-2012年河北旅游业碳排放人均总量在京津冀中最低,同时,北京人均总量却是最高的,2010-2012年京津冀地区中只有北京的人均总量逐年下降,天津旅游业碳排放量人均总量呈现倒U型变化特征,而河北呈现持续上升特征。未来京津冀地区需要从节能减排行动纲要制定、企业节能技术创新等方面推进旅游节能减排工作。     

The Role of Pilot Projects in Urban Climate Change Policy Innovation

Cities are taking a leadership role in addressing global climate change and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but policy innovations are needed to help cities move from goals to outcomes. Pilot projects are one means by which cities are experimenting with new ways of governing and financing climate change mitigation. In this paper, we develop a framework for understanding the role of pilot projects in urban policy innovation: their emergence and rationale, and the means by which they ultimately scale up and out to reduce GHG emissions. We use this framework to evaluate a pilot project for retrofitting social housing buildings in Toronto. We find the initial pilot project helped address the challenges of pursuing deep retrofits of social housing. Scaling these lessons up to the city level required overcoming challenges to financing and coordinating a larger project; scaling out to the provincial level revealed institutional and political obstacles to pursuing the co-benefits of deep building retrofits in social housing. Bridging agents play an important role in both scaling processes. The analysis reveals the additive nature of urban policy innovation and the dynamic interplay of change agents and institutional and political context in innovation processes.     

旅游产业集群的企业网络属性研究——以平遥古城为例

由于旅游产业的特殊性,旅游产业集群内旅游企业间关系和合作并不是建立在投入-产出的物质联系上,旅游产业集群的企业网络也就有不同于制造业集群的属性和特征。根据四种划分标准可以将旅游产业集群的企业网络分为四种不同的类型;根据对平遥古城的调查和利用社会网络分析方法对数据分析发现,以沟通联系和非正式合作为主要内容的非正式网络为主;位于网络中心位置的主要是旅游核心部门或具有一定行业地位的企业;旅游企业本地网络的范围和结网对象与地理空间及个人关系相关;旅游产业集群的企业网络具有本地化网络对集群创新和竞争力提升有重要影响。     

旅游业碳排放强度分布及其驱动因子的时空异质研究——基于30个省(市、区)2005-2014年的面板数据分析

本文利用交通运输业、邮电业、商业、餐饮业、住宿业以及社会服务业这6个行业面板数据,在揭示2005年至2014年30个省(市、区)旅游业碳排放总量与强度的时空动态变化关系时,借助LMDI法分解出影响我国旅游业碳排放增加量的关键因素。研究结果表明:①旅游业碳排放总量在时间上呈逐年上升趋势,且中、西部地区增长速度要显著高于东部地区;②旅游业碳排放强度在时间上呈逐年递减趋势,且中、西部地区下降速度要显著低于东部地区;③影响我国旅游业碳排放增加量的关键因素取决于经济产出因子(TEO)、接待人次因子(TP)、行业结构因子(TIS)、能源效率因子(TEE)、能源结构因子(TES)5个方面,前两者为增量因子,后三者为减量因子。     

Weather sensitivity and climate change perceptions of tourists: a segmentation analysis

ABSTRACT

Many communities rely on tourism spending, so it is important to understand any potential changes to tourist flows resulting from changing climate and weather patterns. However, tourists are not a homogenous group, as they have different motivations, values, and goals. Therefore, the purpose of this investigation is to better understand potentially varying perceptions and behavior of different tourist types, specifically in regards to their weather sensitivity, climate change concern, and behavioral intention for climate change mitigation. Tourists were randomly surveyed at 20 locations throughout the state of Maine in the United States (n = 704). Segmentation analysis on the activities tourists participated in yielded three segments of Maine tourists: non-nature-based tourists (50.6%), nature-based generalists (16.2%), and nature-based specialists (33.2%). Differences across segments were explored for perceptions of weather impacts, climate change concern, and mitigation intent. Additionally, weather sensitivity was analyzed based on type of overnight accommodations to better understand if this also had a role in differences. Non-nature-based tourists thought that weather variables were less influential during their travels in Maine than the other segments, while nature-based generalists perceived weather to have the highest influence. Additionally, nature-based specialists had the highest level of climate change belief, while nature-based generalists had the highest willingness to engage in climate change mitigation behavior. Results are useful to understand how segments of tourism demand may be altered with a changing climate, such as increased temperatures, precipitation, and storms, and what groups may be the most beneficial to target for marketing or educational efforts to reduce the impact of climate change.     

旅游资源新论——基于游憩需求变化与技术进步的视角

旅游资源是旅游业赖以发展的基础。伴随着旅游业的发展,有关旅游资源的认知与研究始终没有间断。为规范旅游资源的认知和界定,国家先后颁布了旅游资源分类及评价的技术标准。在贯彻执行国家标准的过程中,旅游资源的内涵及其类型不同程度上出现了外延拓展的倾向。实际上,旅游资源是游憩需求变化与科技进步的函数。基于生态文明的视角,对旅游资源的内涵及其外延展开进一步的学术讨论,对促进旅游业发育成为战略性支柱产业和人民群众满意的现代服务业,具有重要的理论价值和实践意义。     

Outsourcing the Business of Development: The Rise of For-profit Consultancies in the UK Aid Sector

While much attention has been paid to the ways in which the private sector is now embedded within the field of development, one group of actors — for-profit development consultancies and contractors, or service providers — has received relatively little attention. This article analyses the growing role of for-profit consultancies and contractors in British aid delivery, which has been driven by two key trends: first, the outsourcing of managerial, audit and knowledge-management functions as part of efforts to bring private sector approaches and skills into public spending on aid; and second, the reconfiguration of aid spending towards markets and the private sector, and away from locally embedded, state-focused aid programming. The authors argue that both trends were launched under New Labour in the early 2000s, and super-charged under successive Conservative governments. The resulting entanglement means that the policies and practices of the UK government's aid agencies, and the interests and forms of for-profit service providers, are increasingly mutually constitutive. Amongst other implications, this shift acts to displace traditional forms of contestation and accountability of aid delivery.     

“Fixing” Climate Change by Mortgaging the Future: Negative Emissions,Spatiotemporal Fixes,and the Political Economy of Delay

Models suggest that climate change mitigation now depends on negative emissions, i.e. the large‐scale removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This assumption has been criticised in the climate policy literature for being unfeasible and unjust. This article asks how critical scholars can make sense of, and contribute to these debates. It suggests that negative emissions can be conceived of as a spatiotemporal fix that promises to defer the devaluation of fixed capital. But the negative emissions example also challenges us to broaden our conception of how the socioecological contradictions of capitalism can be “fixed”. I outline three ways in which it does this by highlighting the significance of a predominantly temporal fix, the role of hegemonic, sociopolitical interventions involving multiple actors, and the possibility of safeguarding existing production processes. I conclude that spatiotemporal fixes to climate change should be seen as part of a wider political economy of delay in devaluing carbon‐intensive accumulation processes.     

在线旅游服务提供者顾客需求知识的探索性研究——基于在线旅游服务提供者和顾客的调查

在线旅游的快速发展对在线旅游服务提供商提出了新的要求。与实体环境下的旅游服务提供者类似,在线旅游服务提供者也需要准确识别顾客需求,尤其是个体消费者的需求,进而进行精准营销。现有关于顾客需求知识的研究主要针对员工-顾客服务界面,在线旅游服务发生于人-机交互界面,服务提供者顾客需求知识的内涵和构成有待进一步深入探讨。本文通过对在线旅游服务企业的员工和使用在线旅游服务的顾客进行深入访谈,归纳了在线旅游服务提供者顾客需求知识的内涵、获取顾客需求知识的方式以及在这一过程中顾客扮演的角色,并提出了管理建议。     

Industry Influence in Stakeholder‐Driven State Climate Change Planning Efforts

Drawing from the literature on public participation and stakeholder collaboratives, this article investigates the influence of power and wealth, as well as political and economic context on the output of stakeholders advisory committees convened to formulate state greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation policies. Using small sample regression techniques, we analyze the outputs of stakeholder groups in 18 states that have completed Climate Action Plans to reduce GHGs. We find that an increase of 1 percent in the number of energy industry representatives that participate in Climate Action Councils significantly predicts a 4 percent reduction of GHG mitigation targets for the energy sector. More surprisingly, the results also show that where the utilities represent a larger share of the state economy, the Climate Action Plans identify more aggressive GHG reduction goals for the energy sector. We also find that the political orientation of the executive of the state is not correlated with GHG mitigation requirements for the energy sector, suggesting that GHG mitigation is less partisan at the state level than in Washington, DC. We find no evidence that state wealth is associated with GHG mitigation requirements. Finally, we suggest additional research needed to clarify the role of stakeholder participation processes in the evolving arena of climate change policy.     

The Paris Agreement and the new logic of international climate politics

This article reviews and assesses the outcome of the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP‐21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held in Paris in December 2015. It argues that the Paris Agreement breaks new ground in international climate policy, by acknowledging the primacy of domestic politics in climate change and allowing countries to set their own level of ambition for climate change mitigation. It creates a framework for making voluntary pledges that can be compared and reviewed internationally, in the hope that global ambition can be increased through a process of ‘naming and shaming’. By sidestepping distributional conflicts, the Paris Agreement manages to remove one of the biggest barriers to international climate cooperation. It recognizes that none of the major powers can be forced into drastic emissions cuts. However, instead of leaving mitigation efforts to an entirely bottom‐up logic, it embeds country pledges in an international system of climate accountability and a ‘ratchet mechanism’, thus offering the chance of more durable international cooperation. At the same time, it is far from clear whether the treaty can actually deliver on the urgent need to de‐carbonize the global economy. The past record of climate policies suggests that governments have a tendency to express lofty aspirations but avoid tough decisions. For the Paris Agreement to make a difference, the new logic of ‘pledge and review’ will need to mobilize international and domestic pressure and generate political momentum behind more substantial climate policies worldwide. It matters, therefore, whether the Paris Agreement's new approach can be made to work.     

旅游产业集群:旅游地理学研究的微观领域

产业集群是近年来经济学、地理学、管理学、社会学等学科共同关注的热点问题,旅游产业集群的研究也开始引起重视。旅游地理学开展旅游产业集群的研究一方面有助于从经济和地理的角度对旅游产业集群集聚机制和空间机理的阐释,另一方面也将弥补旅游地理学对于旅游经济微观主体-旅游企业间联系与空间关系的不足,为旅游地理学研究拓展微观研究领域。本文分析了目前国内外学术界和实践领域对于旅游产业集群的论证以及对旅游产业集群概念的阐释和旅游产业集群理论的研究,提出了旅游地理学对旅游产业集群研究的必要性,认为旅游地理学研究旅游产业集群具有综合性、空间性和应用性等学科优势,最后指出旅游地理学研究产业集群主要应从旅游产业集群的形成机理分析、旅游产业集群内企业的竞合关系与创新机制、旅游产业集群的空间结构和布局以及旅游产业集群与区域经济的关系等方面入手,并应通过大量案例支撑理论研究。     

国内外旅游企业员工满意度与忠诚度研究述评

近年来,在以人为本管理理念的影响下,员工满意度与忠诚度的研究成果不断涌现, 并对企业人力资源开发与管理产生了积极影响.本文以国内外相关研究成果为基础,对旅游企业员工满意度与忠诚度的研究历程、研究内容、研究方法及研究趋势进行回顾与述评,为该领域的研究向纵深处发展提供借鉴.     

试论奖励旅游与生产者服务

奖励旅游是现代旅游业发展到一定程度的产物,它是服务经济与生产性服务业日益成熟的表现,也是现代企业管理创新的反映。本文从生产者服务的独特角度,概括了奖励旅游的属性与特点,并对大力扶持奖励旅游提出了有关建议。     

城市旅游形象的监控与管理研究

本文在分析城市旅游形象评价主体（旅游者）与城市旅游形象赋予主体对城市旅游形象诸多层面上认知的差距．及对城市旅游形象策划设计的影响因素进行分析的基础上,明确了城市旅游形象管理部门的工作内容,并从常态管理、战略管理、危机管理和优化管理4个层面对城市旅游形象的管理策略进行了探讨。     

Comparing Climate Change Policy Adoption and Its Extension across Areas of City Policymaking

Public policies increasingly address complex problems such as climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation that require forging connections across existing areas of policy activity. Despite the emerging prominence of these types of policymaking challenges, more research is needed to understand policy responses to them. In this paper, I use survey responses from 287 cities and a hurdle model to comparatively examine the factors that underlie the adoption of climate change mitigation and adaptation as issues influencing city policymaking and their extension across areas of city policymaking. I find evidence that while social change, crisis, and conditions supporting nascent coalitions were associated with adoption, extension across areas of policymaking was associated with the city?s prevailing political economy as well as the resources for expanding communities of interest. In the process, I offer empirical evidence for existing similarities and differences in cities? considerations about climate change mitigation and adaptation; particularly that the number of policymaking areas influenced by mitigation was associated with financial factors while the number influenced by adaptation was associated with socioeconomic ones.     

The Veil of Kyoto and the politics of greenhouse gas mitigation in Australia

This paper investigates how the Kyoto Protocol has framed political discourse and policy development of greenhouse gas mitigation in Australia. We argue that ‘Kyoto’ has created a veil over the climate issue in Australia in a number of ways. Firstly, its symbolic power has distracted attention from actual environmental outcomes while its accounting rules obscure the real level of carbon emissions and structural trends at the nation-state level. Secondly, a public policy tendency to commit to far off emission targets as a compromise to implementing legislation in the short term has also emerged on the back of Kyoto-style targets. Thirdly, Kyoto’s international flexibility mechanisms can lead to the diversion of mitigation investment away from the nation-state implementing carbon legislation. A final concern of the Kyoto approach is how it has shifted focus away from Australia as the world’s largest coal exporter towards China, its primary customer. While we recognise the crucial role aspirational targets and timetables play in capturing the imagination and coordinating action across nations, our central theme is that ‘Kyoto’ has overshadowed the implementation of other policies in Australia. Understanding how ‘Kyoto’ has framed debate and policy is thus crucial to promoting environmentally effective mitigation measures as nation-states move forward from COP15 in Copenhagen to forge a post-Kyoto international agreement. Recent elections in 2009 in Japan and America and developments at COP15 suggest positive scope for international action on climate change. However, the lesson from the 2007 election and subsequent events in Australia is a caution against elevating the symbolism of ‘Kyoto-style’ targets and timetables above the need for implementation of mitigation policies at the nation-state level.