Climate change impacts and tourism mobility: A destination-based approach for coastal areas

Abstract

Even if the concepts of climate change, tourism and transport are strictly connected, the scientific literature has mostly considered their pairwise relations, linking tourism to climate change, transport to climate change, or tourism to transport. This paper aims at considering the three concepts as a whole, exploring the three-cornered interaction between climate change-tourism-transport, and highlighting both the effects of climate change on tourism travel demand and the contribution of tourism transport to CO₂ emissions. To this aim, a heuristic method for assessing implications of climate change on future CO₂ emissions in coastal destinations is presented and then tested on the Italian town of Misano Adriatico. The results reveal a variation in summer tourism demand under different climatic and socio-economic scenarios; accordingly, by 2035 total carbon emissions produced by tourism transport could decrease from 550.57 tCO₂ (status quo) to 216.91 tCO₂ (optimistic scenario) with the adoption of more sustainable transport means made by tourists. This result contributes to the achievement of the environmental targets expressed by the local sustainable urban mobility plan, thus making tourism transport an active driver in the achievement of its goals. With adequate modifications, the method can be applied to other types of tourist cities, thus helping local stakeholders and policymakers to understand the carbon effects of tourist modal choices and develop sustainable strategies.