THE ECONOMICS OF TOURISM AND SUSTAIN-ABLE DEVELOPMENT by Alessandro Lanza, Anil Markandya and Francesco Pigliaru (eds). Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 2005. No. of pages: 328. Price: £75.00 (hardback). ISBN 1-84542-401-8

The Economics of Tourism and Sustainable Development is a compilation of chapters covering the economics of tourism and sustainable development. The book’s aim is to ‘try to present some important economic results and relate them to the policy debate’ (p. 1) in an approach that ‘offers the prescriptions for moving tourism and economic development, gener-ally, closer to a sustainable ideal, with a fi rm ana-lytical anchor’ (p. 1). The book meets its objectives of utilising sound economic theory to analyse issues of sustainability and environmental responsibility in the tourism sector.

Consisting of 11 chapters, the book’s fi rst two chapters lay the foundation, examining tourism from an applied macroeconomic perspective, albeit with only a cursory mention of sustainable develop-ment. The chapter by Bigano et al. (Chapter 6) reviews studies on the impact of climate change on tourism demand and reports on the impact of climate change on domestic tourism in Italy. However, this is not only a compilation of empirical case studies — several theoretical chapters are included, which draw on sound economic theory to provide important insights. The fi rst theoretical chapter (Chapter 3 by Palmer et al.) uses a dynamic general equilibrium model to show that there should be limits to the level of free-market tourism development due to externalities and market fail-ures. The second theoretical chapter (Chapter 4 by Nowak et al.) investigates how trade effects may mean that a tourism boom does not increase welfare. The second half of the book looks at economic sus-tainability from a microeconomic perspective and seeks to answer two broad questions: what eco-nomic inducements and disincentives can be used to promote sustainable development, and what is the demand for environmentally friendly tourism.

As this book is essentially a set of papers by dif-ferent authors (rather than a book written by one author), it is most suitable for tourism economists of both the academic and government/industry persuasions. It would also be appropriate for post-graduate students studying economics, tourism and/or environmental issues. To gain full benefi t from the book, it would be preferential for these students to have majored in economics at an under-graduate level. This publication builds on Sinclair and Stabler’s The Economics of Tourism (1997). For tourism researchers and students who would like to explore in more depth the issues raised in Sinclair and Stabler’s chapters on ‘Tourism and Environ-mental Issues’ and ‘Environmental Valuation and Sustainability’, this book would be ideal.

One of the strengths of the book is the wide range of methodologies used to explore the impact of tourism and sustainable development. While eco-nomic modelling, of both the time-series and cross-sectional variety, is the most widespread way to assess economic and environmental impacts, other methodologies are also explored throughout the book. The chapter by Costantino and Tudini (Chapter 5) shows how to develop an accounting framework for ecological sustainable tourism through the use of tourism satellite accounts (TSAs). A TSA, which depicts the relationships between tourism and other sectors in the economy, is aug-mented with accounts of environmental burdens by sector. The chapter by Bosetti et al. (Chapter 9) uses data envelope analysis in evaluating the effi ciency of the management of tourist municipalities located on the coasts of Italy. The chapter by Ruta and Pedroso (Chapter 10) uses a hedonistic price func-tion to estimate the room prices for two areas in the Dominican Republic, with one location as having more environmental pressures than the other. A quantitative survey is the method used to capture tourists’ willingness to pay for environmental improvements at a popular Croatian tourist desti-nation (Taylor et al., Chapter 7). A choice experi-ment, one of the stated preference approaches, is

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM RESEARCHInt. J. Tourism Res. 11, 319–320 (2009)

Book ReviewEditor: Dimitrios Buhalis

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Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Tourism Res. 11, 319–320 (2009)

implemented by Morimoto (Chapter 11) to examine tourist preferences in Laos. As an edited book, it provides the reader with a range of methods to address issues of economic sustainability.

One weakness of the book is the preponderance of European, and specifi cally Italian, datasets that are used in the empirical chapters. While Chapter 2 (forecasting international tourism demand and uncertainty) uses data from three small island tourism economies and the hedonistic price func-tion chapter (Chapter 10) is set in the Dominican Republic and the choice experiment study explores tourism expansion in Laos (Chapter 11), the remain-ing empirical work is based on European data with a heavy emphasis on Italy. This tends to refl ect the background of researchers and hence either their access to data or academic interest. Nevertheless, it

would have been interesting to see results from other destinations and locations.

This book seeks to contribute to the discourse on sustainable tourism from a sound macro- and microeconomic perspective. The book is certain to stimulate readers’ interest in this subject matter and addresses areas where economics can contribute to this burgeoning topic.

REFERENCE

Sinclair MT, Stabler M. 1997. The Economics of Tourism. Routledge: London.

Stephen PrattNottingham University Business School