The impact of touristic infrastructures on local quality of life: the case of noise pollution in Barcelona

Abstract

Massive tourism has made it necessary the construction of huge infrastructures to serve as regional gates to high capacity transport systems as highways, ports and airports. In installing such infrastructures local quality of life may be seriously disrupted. The valuation of these negative externalities is neural in the correct assessment of touristic investment, and for the correct planning of their integration into the urban fabric. This paper reports the results of a research designed to assess the impact of Barcelona’s airport extension in terms of noise increase. A contingent valuation (CV) approach was carried out in order to extract the stated preference for noise reduction for a representative sample of residential areas.The results reveals that airport enlargement effectively has reduced the quality of life of local residents, in such a way, that even that they are the affected side, they are ready to pay for noise reduction. Furthermore, the data analysis based on logistic regression models suggest two conclusions: 1) the higher is the knowledge of the problem related to noise source, the higher is the WTP, controlling the rest of variables, and 2) also higher is the level of protest rate.