Tourismus und umwelt: überlegungen zur relativen gewichtung von umweltbelastungen

Abstract

In the tourism industry the rapidly increasing environmental dynamism and the intensity of competition call for constant improvements in Services' quality and pricing. Of the various elements in the tourism Performance bundle, the environment is an important starting point for examining the possibility of strengthening competitive position. Relative weightings of individual environmental pollutants regarding their importance to travel decisions are needed as a basis for decisions about effective countermeasures. An analysis of tourism, traffic and environmental developments, as well as an attempt to evaluate the relative weightings of various environmental impacts, gave the following working hypothesis: Of the various environmental pollutants which are relevant to the tourism industry in the Austrian Alpine region, traffic pollution constitutes the most important problem. The problem was examined with an emphasis on Tyrol, but the results should be largely transferable to the neighbouring areas in South Tyrol, Switzerland and Bavaria. The working hypothesis on the one hand refers to tourism as an industry effected by environmental pollutants, which are caused by both tourism and nontourism production and consumption activities. The pollutants act as impairments on the holiday experience. On the other hand it refers to tourism as a problem causer, with external effects on the non‐tourism and tourism industry. Traffic pollution has a comparatively large influence here too. This tourism‐related causer/effected‐combination for environmental pollution is relevant at both the local and the global level in different. Locally the directly effective aesthetic pollution stands out the most, for instance in the form of noise or damage to the countryside. Globally it's the “big” environmental problems (among other things the hypothesis on global warming), where, of the environmental pollution caused by tourism, traffic pollution makes a dominant contribution. The developed working hypotheses and assumptions about the relative weightings of different tourism‐related environmental pollutants are, due to inadequate data, based on rough estimates. To support them, the working hypotheses need, above all, an improved supply of data specific to the problem, to be collected scientifically with, among other things, more social and scientific research into the subjective problem perceptions of tourists and their reactions in the holiday decision process.