Thesis subject

European scenarios for tourism

The Environmental Systems Analysis Group provides the possibility for students to do their thesis in collaboration with our group. This is one of many possible thesis subjects. Please feel free to contact Dr Amelung (right) for more information.

Tourism is increasingly being recognized as an important phenomenon/sector that needs to be addressed in environmental outlooks, e.g. related to climate change, biodiversity, and water. A recurring problem in projects linking global environmental change to tourism is that no tourism-specific scenarios are available that are compatible with well-used sets of scenarios such as the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) and the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). The SSPs contain key indicators (such as population, GDP etc.) and general narratives that have been extended and further specified for a range of sectors. Strikingly, however, no tourism-specific SSPs have been developed so far.

Thesis students are invited to review what is already available in the literature on large-scale and long-term trends and scenarios for tourism, and extend the SSPs for tourism in Europe.