ANALYSIS The “tragedy of tourism resources” as the outcome of a strategic game A new analytical framework Salvatore Bimonte ⁎ Department of Political Economy, University of Siena, Piazza San Francesco 7, 53100 Siena, Italy ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history: Received 17 September 2007 Received in revised form 18 December 2007 Accepted 18 December 2007 Available online 19 February 2008 Game theory is rarely used to deal with the overuse and misuse of tourism resources. When it happens, the issue is normally explained within a non-cooperative setting in which, because of the free riding option, a problem emerges as the socially irrational outcome of an individually rational behaviour (social dilemma). In some cases, the assumptions upon which this explanation rests risk lacking both descriptive accuracy and predictive power. Since tourism is the encounter of a stable (residents) with a changing (tourists) population, the paper asserts that, in many cases, the issue may be better investigated within a strategic game in which the players do not know an aspect of their environment that is important for their choice (Bayesian game). Building on this, the paper demonstrates why an unsustainable path may emerge even when both players prefer preservation to exploitation and no free ride incentive exists. Then, it addresses some policy issues to prevent the dreaded result that non-cooperative behaviour would yield. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Tourism sustainability Game theory Natural resources Tragedy of commons 1. Introduction Tourism is principally the encounter of a mainly known and stable population (the residents) with a generally unknown and changing population (the tourists). Both are probably internally divided into sub-communities, each with its (not necessarily converging) preferences, interests and subjective needs, who most of the time have to reach an agreement on how to simultaneously use and/or share the local resources and how much to exploit them. The problem is particularly serious when these communities have different attitudes or expectations regarding those resources, or want to use them for alternative and mutually exclusive purposes. 1 Therefore, for many tourism resources, whether natural or man-made, tangible or intangible, a potential for conflict regarding usage exists. This introduces a thorny management problem, which we propose to deal within a game theoretic framework. The overuse 2 of tourism resources has rarely been investi- gated within a game theory framework. When done, it has ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS 67 (2008) 457 – 464 ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 0577 235053; fax: +39 0577 232661. E-mail address: bimonte@unisi.it. 1 Just think to the case of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (quoted in Cooper et al., 2002). In this case, a serious management problem arose because of the alternative needs that the different typologies of tourists (canoeists, anglers, and owners of motor boats and water scooters) had with respect to the resource utilization. Conflicts may also arise between believers and tourists in a church. An additional example of alternative and mutually exclusive use may be given by the whale watching (a non-consumptive use) as opposed to the whale hunting (a consumptive use). 2 Overuse is defined with respect to the socially efficient level of exploitation. On this aspect, the interested reader is referred, among the others, to Perman et al., (2003), and Tietenberg, (2004). 0921-8009/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2007.12.020 available at www.sciencedirect.com www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon