Using port operation information, REgional ECONomic System (RECONS) developed by the Institute for Water Resources (IWR) US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) provides estimates of regional and national jobs and other economic measures such as income and sales associated with port activities. Economic impact tool not only reflect regional growth and the importance of port activities, but also serves as an assessment to redistribute maritime resources back to the port communities.
Understanding such, the USACE is also responsible for construction, operations, and maintenance for more than 50 federally authorized cruise ports in the U.S. However, the federal budgetary funds are often linked to total tonnage a port handled rather than the number of passenger served or the regional economic benefits from cruise ships and the passengers. There is a need for the USACE to extend the scope of RECONS to incorporate cruise ports so a standardized and objective assessment can be provided to have a comprehensive view of the benefits of these ports.
Often time, greater economic impacts in terms of job creation, economic growth, and direct/indirect impacts to the local economies are used for marketing and planning purposes to showcase the importance of a port as the economic driver. However, the results from the economic impact study alone may not well serve the local stakeholders and the public who care more about the social awareness of environmental issues, conflicts of interest alongside the value-added chain, and responsible cruise tourism in the local community. Externality and implicit economic costs are often neglected in the calculation of economic impact to truly reflect the reality.
Therefore, this research aims to rethink the concept of how cruise activities is measured in the impact analysis in a way to incorporate key qualitative information such as corporate social responsibility (CSR) in general and environment management and planning in particular. For instance, governance structure of the organization of a cruise port, employees’ education and training practices of a major cruise line, green policy implementation regarding air emission, energy consumption, and waste management for all parties involved in the cruise value-added chain, etc. will be taken into consideration while assessing the economic impact.
The contributions of this study are twofold. First, we offer a theoretical framework to tailor cruise economic impact platform, which will capture the uniqueness of a cruise operation in the value-added chain, the contribution of cruise ports, cruise lines, and cruise service providers and suppliers in a cruise maritime cluster can be quantified respectively as input factors and then come up with an aggregate measure of direct, indirect, and induced impacts as output. Second, we provide a quantitative metric to measure for all relevant environmental responsibility and social awareness to pursue responsible tourism and sustainable cruising. This kind of application will also contribute to a bigger picture of climate change mitigation in the maritime industry, and provide a concrete measure of what kind of adaption plan could be implemented.