University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU) - Research portal
REFRESH - Climate Change: Chances and challenges for tourism destinations close to metropolitan areas
- Project Leader
- Juschten Maria, Project Leader
- Duration:
- 01.07.2016-31.12.2018
- Programme:
- Austrian Climate Research Programme (ACRP) - Cooperative Project
- Type of Research
- Basic Research
- Project partners
-
Federal Environment Agency, Spittelauer Lände 5, A-1090 Wien, Austria.
Contact person: Andrea Prutsch;
Function of the Project Partner: Partner -
Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Art, Rösslimatte 48 , 6002 Luzern, Switzerland.
Contact person: Urs Wagenseil;
Function of the Project Partner: Partner
- BOKU Research Units
- Institute for Landscape Development, Recreation and Conservation Planning
- Institute of Transport Studies
- Subproject(s): REFRESH - Climate Change: Chances and challenges for tourism destinations close to metropolitan areas - ILEN (REFRESH ILEN)
- Funded by
- Klima- und Energiefonds, Leopold-Ungar-Platz 2 / Stiege 1 / 4.OG / Top 142, 1190 Wien, Austria
- Abstract
- Tourism is one of the most important sectors of the Austrian economy; it accounted to 5.3% of the Austrian GDP in 2013. However, given the nature of tourism, this sector is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Due to changing temperatures and precipitation levels, changes in the demand and supply of tourism offers can be expected. On the demand side, travel behaviour and destination choice are likely to be affected by warming temperatures, changes in weather patterns and even extreme weather events. Especially in cities, where abundant sealed and reflective surfaces create higher temperatures than elsewhere, an expected increase in the number of heat days is likely to enhance the demand among city inhabitants for short-trips into the surrounding, rural areas that are traditionally known as “SOMMERFRISCHE” (“Summer retreat”) areas. These are areas that are characterized by their location in close distance around heat-affected agglomerations while still displaying significantly lower temperature levels due to their position in higher altitudes. On the supply side, some of these formerly well-visited ski regions are facing challenges due to a de-creasing reliability of snow conditions, while there are new opportunities arising in summer due to the new potential of these “Sommerfrische” regions as described above.
Althought tourism is of high importance for Austrian economy and strongly affected by climate change impacts, tourism research in relation to climate change has singularly focused on the winter season so far. Travel behaviour of urban citizens as response to increasing heat days (demand side) and multi-seasonal tourism destination developments as adaptation to climate change impacts (supply side) in the summer season are still under-developed. Against this background, the two main objectives of the REFRESH project are:
- To explore how metropolitan people adapt to the increasing number of heat days and tropical nights within the urban agglomeration and to explain their adaptation intensions with respect to their booking and travel behavior towards “Sommerfrische” destinations in the nearby mountainous regions.
- To evaluate if nearby mountainous regions can benefit from the metropolitan people’s travel behaviour and how they can respond on this demand and develop a sustainable multi-seasonal tourism portfolio considering the climate change adaptation and mitigation goals.
- Keywords
- Traffic psychology; Tourism research; Empirical social research; Regional development; Transport planning;
- Destinationmanagement; Heat waves; Climate Change Adaptation; mobility pattern; Tourism;
- Publications
-
Unbehaun, W; Juschten, M; Hössinger, R (2018): Understanding the tourism adaptation intention of urban residents on an increasing number of heat days following from the climate change.
In: International Association for Travel Behaviour Research (IATBR), IATBR 2018: 15th International Confrence on Travel Behavior Research FullText
[IATBR 2018: 15th International Confrence on Travel Behavior Research, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, 15.07.2018 - 19.07.2018] -
Weber, F.; Juschten, M.; Fanninger, C.; Brandenburg, Ch.; Jiricka-Pürrer, A.; Czachs, Ch., Unbehaun, W. (2018): ‘Sommerfrische’ in Times of Climate Change: A Qualitative Analysis of Historical and Recent Perceptions of the Term..
In: Ohnmacht, T, Priskin, J; Stettler, J. , Contemporary Challenges of Climate Change, Sustainable Tourism Consumption, and Destination Competitiveness. Advances in Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research 15, 7–23; Emerald Publishing , Bingley, UK ; ISBN 1871-3173
- Vorträge