The Vulnerability of Coastal Tourism Destinations to Climate Change: The Usefulness of Policy Analysis

Raquel Santos-Lacueva, Salvador Anton Clavé and Òscar Saladié
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Raquel Santos-Lacueva: Research Group on Territorial Analysis and Tourism Studies (GRATET), Department of Geography, Rovira i Virgili University, 43480 Vila-seca, Spain
Salvador Anton Clavé: Research Group on Territorial Analysis and Tourism Studies (GRATET), Department of Geography, Rovira i Virgili University, 43480 Vila-seca, Spain
Òscar Saladié: Research Group on Territorial Analysis and Tourism Studies (GRATET), Department of Geography, Rovira i Virgili University, 43480 Vila-seca, Spain

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 11, 1-19

Abstract: Climate change conditions the sustainability of coastal destinations. This paper looks at the physical conditions that determine exposure and sensitivity to and risk from climate change and explores the sociopolitical contextual factors that determine the vulnerability of destinations. We define a destination’s vulnerability to climate change as being a reduction in its attractiveness caused by climate change combined with the consequences of adaptation and mitigation strategies. To be more specific, this paper aims to discuss the linkage between policymaking and the vulnerability of coastal destinations to climate change. We look at how this vulnerability is determined by decision-making, policies and strategies and propose an innovative analytical framework to assess vulnerability using a policy analysis approach. It is our intention to combine a content analysis of policy documents with an analysis of the perceptions and opinions of the stakeholders that influence decision-making. The paper deals with the complex, multiple, dynamic and fuzzy attributes that characterize all the items that make up this kind of research: climate change (phenomenon), vulnerability (variable), policy analysis (method), policy contents and stakeholder perceptions (indicators), coastal destinations (territorial system) and tourism (activity and policy).

Keywords: vulnerability; climate change; policy analysis; coastal tourism; sustainable tourism planning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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