Abstract
The emergence of Airbnb along with an increase in urban tourism has intensified the pressure on urban areas while adding a new dimension to the dynamics of housing distribution, especially in historic cities. These dynamics affect local economies and significantly alter the characteristics of urban spaces, hence the necessity to not only create policies that foster sustainable tourism development but also to advance urban models that explore the relation between Airbnb and the traditional rental and accommodation sector. Through the case of Venice, the present study sheds light on the potential evolution of Airbnb housing in comparison to the traditional rental and homeowner market. In particular, we sought to understand whether a potential equilibrium between these uses exists and if so, at which point in regard to this equilibrium the historic center of Venice is. To tackle this question, methods derived from the field of game theory and specifically evolutionary game theory were used. With the agents (players) being the housing units, the designed theoretical model explored the population dynamics of the housing units in Venice given the three options of homeownership or long-term renting (residential); short term renting or Airbnb (airbnb); and no use (vacant). The findings of our theoretical population game model were validated and discussed with a dataset describing the usage patterns in the city of Venice during the past 20 years. A verification of the outcome through further case studies could eventually provide insights into the future behavior of tourism’s pressure in historic urban areas.
Highlights
A model based on the framework of evolutionary game theory is developed, a field of game theory that originated in biological contexts and has become of interest amongst a broader spectrum of social and economic sciences [31,32]
The main purpose of this work was to explore the possibility of using some of the ideas of population dynamics and game theory to model the urban dynamics in regard to the Airbnb pressure
Using the houses as agents, it is possible to determine a dynamic that reproduces the qualitative behavior of the real data and offers an overall picture of the possible states of equilibrium
Summary
With overtourism principally occurring in urban areas [5], massive tourism flows put historic areas of cities at great risk [6], resulting in crowding phenomena which test the resilience of the local housing market and the environmental assets but jeopardize the city’s heritage and the quality of life of its residents [7,8]. Amongst these urban areas, the historic centers of European Art Cities, which compose almost half of UNESCOs World Heritage Site list (https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/stat accessed on 30 March 2021), have been the epicenters of overtourism [9]
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