Effects of tourism on net social benefits; defining optimal scale in the Merse watershed, Italy

摘要

Agrotourism, Nature tourism, and Medieval ruins in the Merse watershed could all be developed to accommodate Siena, Italy's growing number of visitors, but will tourism expansion in the Merse watershed increase net social benefit? With tourism as the world's largest and most rapidly growing industry, this is a question common to host communities in almost every corner of the world. In the past, answers to this question have relied on tourism's fantastic ability to generate employment and profit margins literally overnight. However, the lure of tourism's "fail-safe" method to achieve economic growth has been increasingly shadowed by a growing awareness of the ecological, social, and cultural costs paid in exchange. Integrated economic development and ecosystem conservation is an attractive and noble aspiration, but tourism practitioners and planners lament the absence of a market model that accounts for all costs, including the environmental and social. This paper reports on a comprehensive conceptual model, against which the relative costs and benefits of tourism expansion can be weighed. Given the complexity of tradeoffs and consequences, Val di Merse is currently unable to fully perceive, appraise, or control consequences of tourism development. This situation illustrates the central challenge to sustainability, that an inability to monitor, predict, or control impacts resulting from economic growth will eventually threaten the social and natural foundations which support quality of life for residents- and which attract visitors in the first place. This paper contributes the basis for a theoretically rigorous approach to defining optimal scale for Siena's tourism industry.