The impact of marine water quality on tourism demand: an application of geospatial big data to the Mediterranean Spanish coast

Resumen

Tourism sector is highly dependent on environmental quality. In Spain, the tourism sectoris a key driver for the whole economy. In that context, this study aims at analysing theeffect of environmental quality on tourism demand, to test whether a movement of visitorsalong the Mediterranean Spanish coast has occurred. Seemingly Unrelated Regressionmodel has been applied over a sample of 101 Spanish municipalities from the last sevenyears. The results confirm a convergence process of visitors from traditional seasidetourist destinations to previously less crowded tourist sites, whose natural and physicalenvironment shows a better natural conservation.