Economic valuation of climate-change-induced vinery landscape impacts on tourism flows in Tuscany

It is widely acknowledged that landscape features can play a major role in determining tourism demand. The present article assesses the impact of vinery landscape and high‐quality wine production on regional tourism flows in Tuscany, an important tourist region in Italy and renowned for its enchanting countryside. Thus, vinery landscape and high‐quality wine production have been included as explanatory variables in our model for tourism flows. This model has been estimated for both international and domestic markets for the whole region of Tuscany. Estimation results confirm that land areas devoted to the production of these superb Tuscan wines, in the particular case of Siena including the Brunello di Montalcino, play an important role in explaining international tourism flows. In this context, we estimate climate‐change‐induced impacts on vinery landscape and quality wines in the tourism sector. These are estimated to cause a loss in the tourism revenues of nearly 15 and 20 million Euros a year, respectively, for 2020 and 2050, for the Tuscany region. Such losses are quite significant, and reiterate the urgency to identify and implement adequate policy options so as to moderate such land use changes, and respective negative welfare impacts.