Impacts of snow conditions on tourism demand in Austrian ski areas

Climate Research

Christoph Töglhofer¹  Franz Eigner¹  Franz Prettenthaler¹ 

关键词: Climate variability;    Tourism;    Snow;    Regression analysis;    Panel data;    Austria;   

DOI  :  10.3354/cr00939

来源: Inter-Research Science Publishing

【 摘 要 】

ABSTRACT: Major research efforts have been devoted to studying the impacts of climate change on snow conditions in ski areas, including snow making as a technical adaptation strategy in recent years. However, little attention has been paid to quantifying past demand changes owing to short-term climate variability. This paper examines the impacts of snow conditions on tourism demand in 185 Austrian ski areas in the period 1972/1973 to 2006/2007. For the majority of areas, a positive relationship is found between overnight stays and snow conditions; however, overnight stays in higher-lying areas typically show no dependency on snow conditions. Instead, some of them negatively depend on average Austrian snow conditions. Overall, a 1 standard deviation change in snow conditions led to a change in overnight stays of 0.6 to 1.9%, with estimates from the most reliable panel data models of 0.6 and 1.1%. Impacts were significantly higher for particular regions and for extreme seasons. However, temporal analysis reveals that impacts have decreased in recent years, probably owing to the major increase in snowmaking.

【 授权许可】

Unknown