Editorial introduction to the paper by D. R. Vaughan, H. Farr and R. W. Slee on estimating and interpreting the local economic benefits of visitor-spending: an explanation
The purpose of this editorial introduction is to demonstrate the contribution economics can make to explaining and understanding the impact of tourism development at a local level and the nature and scope of the analytical method the subject adopts. It also serves to indicate how the paper by Vaughan et al. – the second of those offering economic perspectives on leisure issues (the rst was published in 18(2), 93–118 (1999) by G. Evans, on the economics of the performing arts) – ts into the context of wider economic analysis of tourism development concerning the cultural, environmental and social effects, especially the costs. Increasingly, reecting a concern with achieving sustainability, the wider ramications of leisure and tourism development are being more closely scrutinised and has given a renewed impetus to impact analysis. Measuring the effect of tourism is probably one of the most researched topics in tourism literature and certainly the most important contribution that economics has made to the eld. However, one must be careful not to claim too much for the subject for within it analysis of tourism has been somewhat compartmentalised. Moreover, the discipline is torn between, on the one hand, developing concepts and theories to explain in rigorous terms, as a foundation for predicting outcomes, behaviour and actions by consumers, producers or governments and deriving, on the other hand, methods for empirical analysis which accord with theoretical principles and offer operational techniques to practitioners. Multiplier analysis does not claim to be a comprehensive analytical framework for measuring the impact of tourism in the sense that Mathieson and Wall (1982) and Pearce (1989) understand it. They considered not only the strictly market effects, in terms of income and employment generation but also the cultural, environmental and social impacts. It is the branch of the subject, generically termed ‘environmental economics’, which in conjunction with cost-benet analysis, is capable of evaluating more comprehensively the Leisure Studies 19 (2000) 91–94