Exploring impact of climate on tourism demand

Tourism demand has been extensively studied by tourism economists under the economic framework. On the other hand travel motivation has also been widely analyzed by the researchers using socio-psychological framework. The focus of this study is to discuss both of these frameworks and to propose a combined framework which illustrates that the root of tourism market demand could be found in both economic and socio-psychological theories and that market demand could be derived from factors underpinning both theories—theories of destination choice and theory of market demand. Climate as an important socio-psychological variable is incorporated into tourism demand analysis through error correction model. The results shed new lights to the potential of the proposed framework in revealing tourism demand.

► Socio-psychological factors are only tested very sparingly in published articles on tourism demand analysis and forecasting.
► Climatic factor, a non-economic variable is found to be significant in tourism demand.
► The results of this research shed new lights to the potential of the proposed framework in revealing tourism demand.