Title of Paper

The Influence of National Park Designation on Summer Tourism Demand in Austria

Author Bios (50 Words for each Author)

Katharina Pöll is a PhD candidate in the Department of Public Finance of the University of Innsbruck in Austria. She holds a Master’s degree in Applied Economics from the University Innsbruck. Her research interests include sustainable tourism, the impacts of climate change on tourism and tourism in protected areas.

Uta Schirpke is a senior researcher at the Department of Ecology of the University of Innsbruck and the Institute for Alpine Environment at Eurac Research. She aims at assessing human-nature relationships in mountain environments and the impacts of global change on ecosystem services.

Abstract (150 Words)

Nature protection comes with many benefits for the public and for biodiversity. Still, in private markets this beneficial land uses are seldomly provided. National parks are a particularly strict form of nature protection that also serves for educational purposes. Therefore, national parks are especially likely to be tourism destinations at the same time. However, there is little evidence how national parks contributed to tourism that rules out other tourism-influencing factors. The present project aims to study how national park designation in Austria contributed to the development of tourism overnight stays. It uses the synthetic control method, a way to compare “treated” national park destinations with synthetic “control” destinations that should have developed exactly the same in absence of the national park designation. Previous literature and first results point into the direction that tourism indeed profited from the national park designation.


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The Influence of National Park Designation on Summer Tourism Demand in Austria

Nature protection comes with many benefits for the public and for biodiversity. Still, in private markets this beneficial land uses are seldomly provided. National parks are a particularly strict form of nature protection that also serves for educational purposes. Therefore, national parks are especially likely to be tourism destinations at the same time. However, there is little evidence how national parks contributed to tourism that rules out other tourism-influencing factors. The present project aims to study how national park designation in Austria contributed to the development of tourism overnight stays. It uses the synthetic control method, a way to compare “treated” national park destinations with synthetic “control” destinations that should have developed exactly the same in absence of the national park designation. Previous literature and first results point into the direction that tourism indeed profited from the national park designation.