文档介绍：Environmental and Resource Economics 24: 213–233, 2003. 213
© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in herlands.
Environmental Management and the
Competitiveness of Nature-Based Tourism
Destinations
TWAN HUYBERS1 and JEFF T2
1School of Economics and Management, The University of New South Wales, Australian Defence
Force Academy, Canberra ACT 2600, Australia (E-mail: t.******@);
2National Centre for Development Studies, The Australian National University
Accepted 15 August 2002
Abstract. Environmental management at nature-based tourism destinations includes a private and
a ponent. The former refers to voluntary environmental protection activities carried out
by individual (and groups of) tourism operators. These activities are motivated by the dependence
of the product provided by the tourism industry on the quality of the natural environment. Public
sector management, on the other hand, refers to the environmental regulations imposed on tourism
businesses. The overall environmental management structure has a dual effect on petitive-
ness of the tourism industry at nature-based tourism destinations. While the industry may benefit
from environmental management through demand stimulation, the tourism businesses also incur the
associated management related costs. In this paper, the overall effect of environmental management
petitiveness, as measured by aggregate tourism industry profitability, is estimated in a case
study of Tropical North Queensland.
Key words: competitiveness, environmental management, region, tourism
JEL classifications: L83, Q21, Q26, Q28, R11
1. Introduction
Tourism activity has grown rapidly since the Second World War due to advances in
technology and increases in standards of living enjoyed across a large part of the
world. Nature-based tourism is a particularly fast growing type of tourism (World
Travel and Tourism Council 1998). However, increases in the number of tourists
at environmental attractions ca