外文翻译原文--环境管理和自然旅游目的地的竞争力

外文翻译原文 -环境管理和自然旅游目的地的竞争力 Environmental and Resource Economics 24 213 233 2003 213 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers Printed in the Netherlands Environmental Management and the Competitiveness of Nature-Based Tourism Destinations TWAN HUYBERS1 and JEFF BENNETT2 1School of Economics and Management The University of New South Wales Australian Defence Force Academy Canberra ACT 2600 Australia E-mail thuyberscom 2National Centre for Development Studies The Australian National University Accepted 15 August 2002 Abstract Environmental management at nature-based tourism destinations includes a private and a public component The former refers to voluntary environmental protection activities carried out by individual and groups of tourism operators These activities are motivated by the dependence of the product provided by the tourism industry on the quality of the natural environment Public sector management on the other hand refers to the environmental regulations imposed on tourism businesses The overall environmental management structure has a dual effect on the competitive- ness of the tourism industry at nature-based tourism destinations While the industry may benet from environmental management through demand stimulation the tourism businesses also incur the associated management related costs In this paper the overall effect of environmental management on competitiveness as measured by aggregate tourism industry protability is estimated in a case study of Tropical North Queensland Key words competitiveness environmental management region tourism JEL classications L83 Q21 Q26 Q28 R11 1 Introduction Tourism activity has grown rapidly since the Second World War due to advances in technology and increases in standards of living enjoyed across a large part of the world Nature-based tourism is a particularly fast growing type of tourism World Travel and Tourism Council 1998 However increases in the number of tourists at environmental attractions can put pressure on that environment Department of Tourism 1994 This raises a number of issues Firstly since the environment often possesses the characteristics of a public good or a common access resource governments have stepped in to impose regulations with respect to environmental impacts of tourism activity This has caused concerns about compliance costs within the tourism industry Yet since the environment provides the attractions for tourists and hence the livelihood for much of the tourism industry the industry recognises the importance of protecting the environment from tourism induced 214 TWAN HUYBERS AND JEFF BENNETT damage Indeed in terms of competition with other destinations both domestic and international a superior condition of the environment might give the destin- ations industry a competitive edge This in turn can provide the impetus for tourism operators to engage in voluntary protection of the environment on which their businesses rely This implies a dual effect of environmental management activities on a tourism destinations competitiveness On the one hand there are cost implications for tourism businesses that affect negatively the destinations competitive position However to the extent that visitor demand is determined by the quality of the destinations environment the destinations competitiveness is enhanced The combination of these two effects is addressed in this paper In particular the cost and demand implications of environmental management for competitiveness are investigated in a case study of Tropical North Queensland1 Tropical North Queensland is an appropriate case study region for three related reasons Firstly the region is one of Australias prime nature-based destinations for both domestic and international tourists The regions tourism industry relies heavily on the general quality of its environmental assets Driml and Common 1996 Far North Queensland Regional Planning Advisory Committee 1998 This includes the two World Heritage listed natural attractions the Great Barrier Reef and Wet Tropics Rainforests as well as the general scenic landscapes and natural areas2 Secondly due to the development of Tropical North Queensland there has been public concern about the quality of the regions environment Far North Queensland Regional Planning Advisory Committee 1996 As a result the regions tourism businesses are subjected to various types of environmental regu- lations Huybers and Bennett 2000b The regulatory framework constitutes the public environmental management component with respect to the regions tourism industry Finally various private environmental management activities are carried out in the regions tourism industry Huybers and Bennett 2000b identify environ- mental protection as one of the two major areas of cooperation between tourism businesses in Tropical North Queensland The paper is structured as follows The conceptual framework underlying the empirical investigation is developed in the next section This is followed by a section in which the data and their sources are discussed The assumptions under- lying the model are outlined in Section 4 The results of the simulations of the model are presented in Section 5 In the nal section the implications of the investigation are discussed 2 Conceptual Framework The literature regarding the relationship between the environment and international competitiveness has traditionally focussed on the effects of environmental compli- ance costs Jayadevappa and Chhatre 2000 UNEP 2000 In this conventional view rms environmental management measures are interpreted as reactive in NATURE-BASED TOURISM DESTINATIONS 215 nature ie businesses complying with externally imposed environmental regula- tions Turner Pearce and Bateman 1994 Altham and Guerin 1999 In that context a comparatively high level of domestic environmental protection costs is hypothes- ised to reduce the internationally competitive position of domestic industries as reected in reduced economic prots andor smaller market shares The hypothesised relationship between environmental protection costs and international competitiveness has been subjected to empirical investigation Kalt 1988 Repetto 1995 Jaffe et al 1995 The empirical studies focus on the macroe- conomic effects of environmental control costs on a countrys trade balance The ndings show no evidence of a signicant impact of environment control expenditure on international trade ows This is mainly attributed to the small share of environment control costs in total business costs approximately two percent on average across industries These studies are limited in two ways They concentrate solely on the cost effects associated with environmental protection regulations imposed by govern- ments and they are predominantly macro in focus However an analysis that is restricted to the supply side effects across the whole economy ignores the potential relevance of demand side factors on an industry by industry scale Increas- ingly rms and industries are becoming aware of the potential benets of their environmental protection activities with respect to consumer demand Acknowledging the potential demand effects of environmental management on competitiveness is particularly relevant to Australias tourism industry Since the environment is an important component of Australias tourism product Huybers and Bennett 1996 1997 protection of the environment can be expected to be an important demand stimulator The benets that result from demand stimulation may act as an incentive for voluntary environmental protection activities by tourism business operators either individually or as a group The notion of the dual effect with respect to a nature-based destinations environment-competitiveness relationship is illustrated in Figure 1 It incorpor- ates the conventional view of tourism businesses regulatory compliance costs as one link between environmental management and competitiveness However in addition to government regulations voluntary environmental protection activ- ities by tourism businesses constitute the other component of the environmental management framework The costs incurred by tourism businesses due to environmental management reduce the competitiveness of the destinations tourism industry compared with other destinations ceteris paribus However there may also be a link between environmental management and demand both direct and indirect The indirect link is established via the positive effect of environmental management on the quality of the destinations environmental assets Tourists are drawn to the region because of its superior environmental attractions compared to other destinations The direct link pertains to the effect of prospective tourists preferences for visiting destinations where the environmental attractions are known to have a 216 TWAN HUYBERS AND JEFF BENNETT Figure 1 Environmental management and the competitiveness of a nature-based tourism destination protected status3 Both the direct and indirect demand side links imply an increased willingness by tourists to pay for a visit to the region The concept of competitiveness is often associated with an individual rm and its position in the business environment For instance in the strategic management literature the emphasis is explicitly on a rms pursuit of positive economic prots since rm strategy is essentially about how to position and manage a rm so that efciency rents may be created protected and possibly increased Foss 1996 1 In that context competitiveness is dened as a rms ability to sustain its protability in competition with its rivals This rm-level denition of compet- itiveness is here applied to the aggregate tourism destination region that as an entity competes with domestic and international regions Hence the focus is on the aggregate protability of the nature-based tourism industry based in Tropical North Queensland and not on the individual tourism businesses in the region such as accommodation and attraction operators Adopting the perspective of a region or a country as an aggregate entity is common in economic analysis For instance international trade ows are analysed at the country level by considering aggregate country characteristics With respect to tourism destinations countries and lower level aggregate destinations are frequently used as units of analysis Findlay and Forsyth 1988 Ritchie and Crouch 2000 For instance with respect to nature-based destinations Findlay and Forsyth 1988 110 refer to the foundation of market power at the national level This is because any one country will have a unique natural resource endowment Using a region as the unit of analysis is also consistent with the concept of the geographically concentrated cluster Pyke and Sengenberger 1992 Porter 1998 Schmitz 1999 In a cluster rms within the region compete with each other in certain areas on the basis of their individual strengths while they engage in collective inter-regional competition based on the regions distinctive features For nature-based tourism destinations cooperative behaviour is expected to be concen- NATURE-BASED TOURISM DESTINATIONS 217 Figure 2 Tropical North Queensland environmental management and protability trated on the key natural attractions that are the major distinguishing destination characteristics Huybers and Bennett 2000b document evidence of the nature and extent of cooperation between tourism businesses in Tropical North Queensland The two main areas are collective promotion of the destination and environmental protec- tion activities This is further developed in Huybers and Bennett 2001 in which the rationale for treating Tropical North Queensland as a collective entity and appropriate aggregate unit of analysis is established The conceptualisation of Figure 1 can be translated into the economic model of Figure 2 This model is the basis for the empirical investigations reported in the paper It shows Tropical North Queensland as a destination that competes in an imperfectly competitive international market for tourism destinations4 The region exerts a degree of market power due to the differentiation of its tourism product based on the relatively high quality of its environmental assets This is reected in the downward sloping demand curve Applying the model of imperfect competition to a tourism destination is consistent with Findlay and Forsyth 1988 Figure 2 illustrates the impact of environmental management on the aggregate protability of Tropical North Queenslands tourism industry It shows the market for Tropical North Queenslands composite tourism product in two situations with and without environmental management For simplicity marginal costs MC are assumed constant and hence the MC and average cost AC curves are drawn as a single horizontal line5 Cost curves MC and AC the downward sloping demand 1 1 curve D 1 and its associated marginal revenue curve MR 1 refer to the situation 218 TWAN HUYBERS AND JEFF BENNETT in which environmental management has been effective in achieving a high environmental quality The prot-imisation equilibrium is reached at quantity q and price p resulting in an aggregate economic prot accruing to the regions 1 1 tourism industry equal to area abcp1 The situation without environmental management is represented by a decline in both demand and in costs of Tropical North Queenslands tourism product ceteris paribus These costs include rms costs of complying with imposed government regulations and any expenditure related to voluntary environmental protection activities While tourism business operators costs fall due to the absence of environmental management the condition of the environment deteriorates and results in a fall in demand This situation is represented by the cost curves MC AC demand curve D and marginal revenue curve MR The new level 2 2 2 2 of aggregate prot is equal to area defp A fall in aggregate industry prot as 2 depicted in Figure 2 is interpreted as a decline in destination competitiveness The marginal perspective represented in Figure 2 implies that the direction and magnitude of the change in the regions aggregate tourism industry prot depends on the relative magnitudes of the cost and demand side effects ceteris paribus 6 The latter refers for instance to the situation at other destinations It also involves the other conditions related to Tropical North Queensland itself such as the regions destination promotion While Tropical North Queenslands destination promotion emphasises the quality of its natural attractions the extent and nature of that promotion and is assumed to be unaffected in the analysis The above model is used as the basis of an empirical assessment of the compet- itiveness effects of environmental management in Tropical North Queensland To determine the shift in the cost curves in Figure 2 estimates of tourism businesses costs of environmental management are required Similarly estimates of the effect of environmental quality on tourist demand are needed to assess the shift in the demand curve in the gure The nature of the relevant data and the methodologies used to collect them are now briey discussed 3 Data 31 COSTS Australian Bureau of Statistics 1999a contains gures on environment protec- tion expenditure in Australian industries in 1996 97 Environment protection expenditure includes expenditure related to compliance with regulations as well as voluntary activities associated with market forces Using industry cost gures Australian Bureau of Statistics 1999b it can be shown that the costs of environ- mental management are less than or around one percent of total costs for Australian industries However environmental management costs may be more signicant for indi- vidual industries or sectors within industries For instance some industries sectors NATURE-BASED TOURISM DESTINATIONS 219 or individual rms depend more heavily on the environment than others and are more heavily regulated with respect to their effects on the environment This is reected in higher environmental compliance costs In that context Huybers and Bennett 1996 1997 estimated the costs of environmental regulations to tourism operators in Australia to be around ve percent of total business costs To substantiate the industry estimates the costs of environmental management to tourism businesses in Tropical North Queensland were estimated using eld st