Economic Impact Of Tourism On Tompkins County Economy: Social Accounting Matrix And Structural Path Analysis Approaches

Tourism has been regarded as a key economic driver in both developed and developing nations due to its potential for income and employment generation. The present study finds that - based on 2006 Tompkins County, New York, data - tourism has a marginal role in the local economy. The estimated revenues from tourism accounted for a little over two percent of the 2006 regional gross domestic product (RGDP), while in 2009 the economic recession causes the industry to contract by less than one percent of the County's RGDP. Impact analysis based on Social Accounting Matrix multipliers framework suggests that such contraction reduces household income by only 0.13 percent. Nonetheless, the combination of the loss of tourism factor income and a 10 percent decline of tourism input expenditures results in a 6.3 percent decline of household income. Structural Path Analysis reveals that in general the impact of a tourism shock is transmitted to household groups on a direct path with relatively small path multipliers. The paths therefore indicate that any shocks to tourism sectors affect households directly through factor incomes. At the same time, the multiplier impact of a tourism shock on household income is typically found to be marginal. The present study concludes that the impact of tourism activities is smaller than that of other Tompkins County activities