Results
Tourists in Val di Merse have a high average length of stay
(5.3 days) with respect to other Italian destinations, sourcing
their day-visits from a single place of lodging (CST, 2004).With
a total of 250,115 bednights, we estimate 685“equivalent
residents”for the Val di Merse, which represents an additional
5% over the registered population (Table 2). Beyond the use in
ecological footprint accounting, this data is of use to civic
planners, in estimating resource consumption, waste produc-tion and urban development consideration.
We estimated the EF for the tourist equivalent resident
population to be 5.28 gha/year per capita, for a total of
3617 gha/year for all 685 tourist equivalent residents. This
compares to 5.47 gha/year/capita for the resident population
of 13,624, for a total of 74,523 gha/year (Fig. 2). This result
cannot be directly and reliably compared with the EF results
from other studies of tourist EF without background informa-tion on calculation model, data collection methods, equiva-lence and conversion factors, and impact category
aggregations. However, EF figures and estimates of tourist
equivalent resident populations are presented for summary
purposes (Table 3).