Economic analysis of global climate change in the Alps

Alexandra Chrzanowská

Bakalářská práce

Abstract:

The bachelor thesis deals with the impact of global climate change on the Alpine environment over the years. It was investigated whether tourism could have some impact on the Alpine environment or the economy. For more accurate observation and a better outline of the result, data from the summer and winter seasons were processed separately. The main idea was that with the growing world population, tourism and carbon emissions should grow too, and thus the associated environmental impacts, such as rising temperatures, which could be to blame, the unfavourable living conditions for the Alpine biodiversity but also the impact on the economy, such as the loss of water resources in the Alpine areas. Average monthly temperatures from a few meteorological stations around the Alps between 1979-2019 were used for observation. Tourism data were processed as the number of nights spent in hotels and tourist accommodation. These data were different for each area due to the lack of available data, and the areas were divided into the Italian, Swiss and Austrian parts of the Alps. The last data source used would be the annual CO2 data, again in 1979-2019. The above data were processed by statistical methods of regression and correlation analysis. It was found that the Alpine regions showed no relationship between tourism and temperature, and even though there might be some reaction of tourism to temperature changes, the impact is not significant yet. In the analysis of changes in CO2 and temperature, there was no relationship, and thus the correlation is very weak. The lag variable was also investigated in this analysis due to the possible delayed temperature response to CO2, but this did not manifest itself, and therefore a more detailed study is needed to address other factors that may affect the temperature.

Keywords

weather, tourism, economic analysis, alps, summer, co2, winter, regression analysis, correlation, global climate change

Jazyk práce: angličtina

Datum vytvoření / odevzdání či podání práce: 15. 3. 2021

Obhajoba závěrečné práce

• Vedoucí: doc. Ing. Petr Procházka, MSc. Ph.D.

Česká zemědělská univerzita v Praze

Provozně ekonomická fakulta

Bakalářský studijní program / obor:
Economics and Management / Economics and Management