Exploring Amsterdam’s Party Tourism; Employing the Theory of Planned Behaviour and Spatial Agent-Based Modelling to Understand its Current State and Envision its Future

By Femke van den Dries

Abstract
Residents of Amsterdam frequently report nuisance and a feeling of insecurity due to party tourism and the municipality is looking for appropriate policy to tackle this. The effect of the policy measures that are currently under debate is uncertain, leading to a slow decision process. This research explores Agent-Based Modelling (ABM) as a tool to understand party tourism behaviour in Amsterdam and explore the effects of the currently proposed policy measures: the I-criterium, abolishing window prostitution and an entrance fee to the Red-Light District. To predict party tourism behaviour, the model incorporates the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) through a utility function.

The simulation provides insights into the hotspots of party tourism in space and time. Findings show that the weights of the TPB elements in the utility function change the simulated spatiotemporal patterns in the city of Amsterdam, and these weights should therefore be based on empirical data. Simulation of the policy scenarios shows that the I-criterium is the most promising scenario in terms of discouraging party tourists and redistributing them across the city. Other policies were effective at spatial redistribution of tourists yet continued to show an upward trend in tourist numbers throughout time. These results underline the potential of ABM as a tool for party tourism management in the city of Amsterdam when further strengthened with empirical findings.

Keywords: Agent Based Models; Theory of Planned Behaviour;
Party Tourist Behaviour; Simulation; Scenario Analysis; Amsterdam