https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9805-6365
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ABSTRACT
This paper examines the role of seawater deterioration in the beta convergence process of tourism demand. We propose an empirical application with observations of tourist arrivals from 2013 to 2019 for 101 municipalities on the Spanish Mediterranean coast. Seawater deterioration is evaluated using a specific indicator of the ecological status of the sea, chlorophyll, derived from images provided by the European Spatial Agency Sentinel-3 satellite. Based on this information, we estimate the beta-convergence specification of tourist arrivals by using a spatial Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR). Our results confirm the existence of an accelerating nonlinear effect of seawater pollution on the beta convergence process of tourism demand. Once a municipality surpasses a threshold value in terms of pollution, tourists who had previously visited popular destinations move to less well-known, less polluted municipalities along the coast. In addition, we find significant spatial spillover effects among municipalities in this process.
Acknowledgement
The authors aknowledge the opportunity we had to present preliminary results of this work at the 28th APDR Congress and the valuable comments received which provided us further support to develop this study. Mariluz Maté-Sánchez-Val acknowledges the financial support received from Fundación Séneca, Science and Technology Agency of the Region of Murcia, Contract n° 19884/GERM/15 and Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación PID2019-107800GB-I00.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).