| The primary purpose of this study was to construct statistical models to assess the impact of weather variability on travel activity. Weather condition plays an important role in making many leisure and tourism activities feasible and enjoyable, and a trend towards a warming climate has been recognized. Nevertheless, research on weather, climate and leisure travel has been relatively lacking, especially studies involving measuring of the quantitative relationships between weather variation and participation levels of leisure travel.In this study, daily Michigan highway traffic counts from eighteen stations, excluding commercial truck traffic, were used to represent leisure travel activities. Explanatory variables in the models include weather conditions (maximum temperature and precipitation), economic conditions (Consumer Confidence and gasoline prices), and temporal variables controlling for the availability of leisure time. After testing regression models of different functional forms on a single traffic station, the double-log model was identified as the best fitting model. This model was then applied to other traffic stations across Michigan. Modeling results indicated that for stations dominated by leisure traffic (tourist stations), the effects of weather variability on leisure traffic were consistent across locations. Particularly, temperature had a positive effect on fluctuations in daily tourism traffic during spring, summer, and fall, while precipitation had a negative effect during winter. In separate approaches, a threshold temperature was discovered for summer with the use of the spline function. The models for studying lagged effects of weather yielded inconsistent results.The findings of this study had both theoretical and managerial implications. For academic research, results of this study can be incorporated with future climate scenarios to investigate long-term implications of climate change on the leisure travel industry. For practical purposes, information of how weather conditions impact daily business volume can be useful to tourism managers for guiding day-to-day operations. For tourism planners and developers, understanding the effects of weather variability on activity levels is beneficial in making mid- to long-term planning decisions in order to adapt to a changing climate. |
