FEBRUARY 1999JOU N L OF TRAVEL RESEARCH The Effects of Governmental Restrictions on Outbound Tourist Expenditures

Without a considered analysis of the costs and benefits of policies that restrict tourist activity, the various parties that influence and are influenced by the development of the tour-ism industry may be frustrated in their search for productive dialogue and consensus. Although restrictive policies on out-bound tourism are common and widespread, little prior work has examined the effectiveness and consequences of such policies. This article evaluates the impacts on outbound tour-ist behavior of lowered duty-free import limits in the case of Mexican cross-border visitors to the United States. Results suggest that (a) stable cross-border expenditures and com-pensatory behavior by outbound tourists may limit the effec-tiveness of restrictions on duty-free imports and that (b) these restrictions may increase overall tourism imports, im-plying that attempts to restrict or regulate tourist activity may produce results that are the opposite of those intended. From the perspective of an outbound tourist’s home gov-ernment, cross-border shopping increases the consumption of foreign goods and services. Tourism imports (i.e., expen-ditures by national residents in a foreign country) negatively affect the balance of payments (McIntosh and Goeldner 1984, pp. 405-6), which may encourage government officials to attempt to restrict outbound tourist expenditures (Edgell 1990, pp. 56-58). Although the literature on tourism policy and planning recognizes the importance of evaluating “the degree to which a country attracts [foreign] visitors when compared with its ability to persuade home residents not to travel abroad ” (Mathieson and Wall 1982, p. 57, emphasis added), academic focus has stressed tourism export