Economic benefits of the air transport sector: The role of tourism-related effects

Kurzfassung

As one of the fastest growing transport segments, air transport is under increasing pressure for its negative externalities, such as carbon and non-CO2 emissions and related climate impacts at the global level, and its (aircraft and engine) noise emissions which occur usually at the local (airport region) levels and may hamper airport future growth. This may explain the publication of a bunch of studies prepared by, or on behalf of, aviation stakeholders, which point at the sector’s economic benefits. Traditionally, such studies focused on the classic demand effects, such as jobs or gross value added created by the sector and along its chain of suppliers, and hence did not differ significantly from other industry’s impact studies. To an increasing extent, however, other effects, often labelled as wider economic benefits or catalytic effects, are getting more and more attention. These shall represent positive externalities of the air transport sector which occur beyond its own value chain, such as connectivity-related location benefits yielding in the regional attraction of tourists and firms. It seems that a common understanding of how to approach such effects is still pending. We evaluate existing studies on regional airport effects in English and German language to assess which kinds of wider economic benefits are commonly dealt with, and how. Hereby, we pay particular attention to tourism-related impacts and assess if outbound tourism effects (which suggest regional purchase power outflow) are as commonly featured as inbound tourism.