| This paper shows that it is difficult, if not impossible, to formulate policies that guarantee that tourism can be maintained for a long time without severely impacting on the environment. The analysis is purely theoretical and is based on very simple and general assumptions about the interactions between the three main components of the system: the tourists, the environment, and the capital. These assumptions are encapsulated in a so-called minimal model, used to predict the economic and environmental impact of any given policy. This paper is of value for three reasons. First, it introduces the approach of minimal descriptive models in the context of tourism, which has traditionally been dominated by the use of black-box econometric models. Second, the... |
