The economic impacts of harmful algal blooms on tourism: an examination of Southwest Florida using a spline regression a
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The economic impacts of harmful algal blooms on tourism: an examination of Southwest Florida using a spline regression approach Andrew Bechard1 Received: 10 June 2019 / Accepted: 13 July 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Harmful algal blooms (HABs) can be a natural hazard unlike anything else. Whereas a hurricane or tornado has a sudden and devastating impact to an area, an HAB can slowly impact people and the environment over the course of weeks, even months. Karenia brevis, more commonly known as red tide, can have this effect along the Gulf Coast of Florida, lasting for many weeks in a row, causing large-scale deaths in fish and other marine life, and respiratory issues in humans. These harmful effects can effect tourism, as visitors are not able to enjoy the coastlines Florida is famous for. We test a 6 county region, from Pinellas County, FL down to Collier County, FL, to determine the magnitude with which an additional day of red tide affects tourism-related revenues. Using a spline regression approach, we find that an additional day of red tide in a month with 17 days or more of red tide drives monthly lodging sector sales down by 1–2%, and restaurant sector sales down by 0.5–1%. As these blooms are increasing in frequency and persistency, it becomes of great importance to counties and effected businesses to control and mitigate red tide blooms as soon as possible. If not, losses and harmful effects will only continue to grow and become detrimental to the environment and economy. Keywords Spline modeling · Economics · Harmful algal blooms (HABs) · Karenia brevis · Red tide
1 Introduction In order to get a sense of just how much tourism the state of Florida generates, look no further than Sarasota County, sporting over 40 miles of coastline that contain several of the top ranked beaches in the world, including perennial favorite Siesta Key. In 2017–2018 alone, Sarasota County welcomed over 2.7 million visitors (Visit Sarasota 2019). Averaged out, that amounts to almost 7500 new visitors each day. With this massive influx of visitors, it is no surprise that the county enjoys a nice economic boost from the tourists. * Andrew Bechard [email protected] 1
Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, University of Rhode Island, 45 Upper College Rd, Kingston, RI 02881, USA
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Visitors accounted for over 1.84 billion dollars in expenditures, creating a total economic impact northward of 3 billion dollars. In the lodging sector, more than 2.68 million “room nights” were generated for the year, an average of 7342 per night (Visit Sarasota 2019). With tourism booming, so were tourism-related jobs, with over 6.8 million dollars paid in wages to employees holding these positions. It is easy to see how impactful tourism is to Florida. However, the enjoyed economic gains can be abruptly stagnated if tourists are no longer able to use the great beaches, and all the amenities around them. Harmful algal blooms (HABs) that grow in the Gulf of Mexico hav
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