Preservation of environmental quality and tourist investments

Abstract

We develop a theoretical model to analyze the incentives for hotel chains to make environmentally friendly investments. We show that the level of investment of hotel chains to improve the environmental quality of a tourist destination depends positively on two factors: tourist demand and the level of aggregate income. The framework is based on a model of horizontal differentiation à la Hotelling. By introducing a demand function for tourist commodities, we show that an increase in total income encourages hotel chains in the regions with higher demand to invest on environmental quality.