Assessing the carbon footprint of tourism businesses using environmentally extended input-output analysis

Abstract

The tourism industry contributes eight percent to global carbon emissions, directly and indirectly. Indirect carbon emissions are often neglected because they are difficult to calculate. The traditional approach to calculating indirect emissions – Life Cycle Assessment – is expensive and requires an expert data analyst. We introduce an alternative approach, the Environmentally Extended Input-Output Analysis. We show how this approach – currently used at macro-level to estimate carbon emissions at national or regional level – can be applied to the business level using carbon emissions generated by one hotel room clean as an example. Our comparative analysis shows that Environmentally Extended Input-Output Analysis leads to similar results as Life Cycle Assessment, while being substantially cheaper and more user-friendly. Environmentally Extended Input-Output Analysis, we conclude, enables tourism businesses to estimate the indirect carbon emissions of their operations, which is the key to identifying target areas for improvement.

Keywords:

• Environmentally extended input-output analysis
• life cycle assessment
• tourism carbon inventories
• tourism environmental impact
• Scope 3 emissions

Acknowledgements

We are particularly grateful for the assistance provided by Aaron Roberts and Steven George.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, there are 15 categories of Scope 3 emissions, including “1) purchased goods and services, 2) capital goods, 3) fuel- and energy related activities (not included in Scope 1 or Scope 2), 4) upstream transportation and distribution, 5) waste generated in operations, 6) business travel, 7) employee commuting, 8) upstream leased assets, 9) downstream transportation and distribution, 10) processing of

sold products, 11) use of sold products, 12) end-of-life treatment of sold products, 13) downstream

leased assets, 14) franchises, and 15) investments” (World Resource Institute, 2011, p. 7).

Additional information

Funding

Csilla Demeter is a PhD candidate funded by a joint University of Queensland and Ecotourism Australia scholarship. This work was supported by the Australian Research Council's Laureate Fellowship scheme (FL190100143) and the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology under MOST 107-2410-H-006-100-MY2.

Notes on contributors

Csilla Demeter

Csilla Demeter is a researcher at the University of Queensland, Australia. Her research interests include developing and testing interventions that help further reduce carbon emissions in tourism.

Pei-Chun Lin

Pei-Chun Lin is a Professor at the National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, and is Executive Editor for Asia Pacific Management Review. Her primary research interests are in supply chain optimization and logistics information management.

Ya-Yen Sun

Ya-Yen Sun is a senior lecturer at the University of Queensland, Australia. Her interest is in applying the macro-level modelling tools to understand tourism economic impacts and tourism environmental impacts.

Sara Dolnicar

Sara Dolnicar is a Professor of Tourism at The University of Queensland. Her primary research interest is the improvement of market segmentation methodology and of measures used in social science research. She applies her work primarily to tourism, but also social marketing challenges, such as environmental volunteering, foster care and public acceptance of recycled water.