An educational simulation tool for integrated coastal tourism development in developing countries

Abstract

In spite of the importance of coastal tourism for the economies of many developing countries, tourism infrastructure has often been developed without full consideration of long-term impacts on the environment. The simulation model presented in this paper aims to address critical gaps in awareness and capacity for integrated decision-making and planning in tourism infrastructure development in a developing country context. We build a simple closed-loop model of tourism infrastructure investment, which integrates typical economic, social and ecological dimensions of the problem. The model is calibrated so that within 20 years, investment projects in tourist capacity done without concomitant investment in solid waste and wastewater treatment result in a collapse of fish stocks and a sharp drop in tourist attendance. The model includes several policy options that allow users to intervene at various points in the loop, allowing stakeholders to explore how various combinations of policies perform in financial, environmental and social terms over the long period. The model can, therefore, be used as an educational tool for training and capacity-building.

一个在发展中国家海岸带综合旅游开发的教育模拟工具

尽管沿海旅游业对许多发展中国家的经济有很高的重要性，旅游基础设施的开发却经常没有充分考虑对环境的长期影响。本文提出的仿真模型的目的是在发展中国家背景下解决旅游基础设施建设中意识和能力的综合决策和规划的关键差距。我们构建了一个简单的旅游基础设施投资的闭环模式，它集成了典型的经济、社会和生态方面的问题。该模型进行校准以便在20年内，在游客容量范围内的投资项目得以完成，并且不产生伴随投资，主要体现在固体废物和废水处理导致的鱼类种群的崩溃和旅游上座率的锐减。该模型包括几个政策选项，这允许用户在环路的不同点进行干预，使利益相关方探讨不同的政策组合如何在金融、环境和社会方面长期执行。该模型因此可以作为一个教育工具被用作培训和能力建设。

Keywords:

• tourism
• infrastructure development
• sustainability
• industrial ecology
• simulation tool

关键词:

• 旅游
• 基础设施发展
• 可持续性
• 工业生态学
• 仿真工具

Acknowledgements

We thank the editor and two anonymous referees for their useful comments.

Disclosure statement

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2015.1091463

Notes

1. This is in spite of international commitments that Governments may have made, for example, under multilateral environmental agreements (see Singh & Mee, 2008).

2. For a discussion of related issues on the case of Cyprus (see Yasarata, Altinay, Burns, & Okumus, 2010).

3. One of the first application of systems thinking to tourism simulation model can be found in Walker, Greiner, McDonald, and Lyne, 1998. For an application of industrial ecology to tourism (see e.g. Kuo, Hsiao, & Lan, 2005).

4. For simplicity, throughout the article we use the term “policies” to encompass measures that can be taken by the various actors to mitigate adverse economic, social and environmental impacts. The term is thus used in a broader sense than its usual meaning.

5. We only provide these two options for the sake of simplicity. In no way do we suggest that these are the only options that should be considered to address the loss of livelihoods of local fishermen. The literature on indigenous people's participation in local development (e.g. in mining, oil and gas extraction, tourism) suggests that genuinely including the indigenous community in the decision-making process and sharing of the revenues generated by tourism investment would be a critical and difficult issue in real-life situations.

6. Note that an optimum obtains even though there are no scale effects in our simplified model of cash flows for the hotel: all incomes and expenditures are strictly proportional to the scale of the hotel. Here, the presence of an optimum is due to the fixed size of the lagoon.

7. In our case, it would be straightforward to calculate “optimal” solutions to a Nash bargaining program that weighs the interests of the four groups considered here. Rather than the solution, the interesting point would be the selection of weights attached to the different groups.

8. We thank an anonymous referee for reminding us of the importance of this variable in the debate on the benefits of tourism development in cases like ours.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Annick Anctil

Dr Annick Anctil is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on proactive sustainability assessment to reduce the environmental impact of new technologies and ensure that all stages of the life cycle of a product or system are environmentally, economically and socially sustainable. Multi-criteria decision analysis, which provides a mathematical methodology for incorporating the values of various stakeholders with conflicting objectives, is also one of her areas of expertise.

David Le Blanc

David Le Blanc is an economist in the Division for Sustainable Development in the United Nations in New York. While at the UN, he has worked on integrated strategies for sustainable development, sustainable development assessments, development in Africa and mining. His earlier work at Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques and the World Bank focused on housing and housing finance.