At a Glance:

Coastal communities are sometimes concerned that offshore wind will impact tourism, which may be a large part of their economy. Evidence relevant to our New England shores comes from studies done on Block Island, RI. In fact vacation rental activity increased on Block Island after construction of the Block Island Wind Farm relative to before construction. Moreover tourists willingness to pay for a vacation experience in areas with or without views was unaffected and repeat visitors and survey respondents with prior knowledge of the turbines are willing to pay more, on average, for locations with a view of the turbines.

A Deeper Dive:

Carr-Harris & Lang (2019) examine data from AirBnb for the island of Block Island and three nearby tourist destinations in Southern New England. They find that the Block Island Wind Farm caused a significant increase in nightly reservations, occupancy rates, and monthly revenues for AirBnb properties on Block Island during the peak-tourism months of July and August, but had no effect in other months. The findings indicate that offshore wind farms can act as an attractive feature of a location, rather than a deterrent, even when the turbines are only 3 miles off the coast. This study of how offshore wind affects tourism used market data, while Trandafir et al. (2020) uses surveys.

Other pertinent research in this area uses surveys to assess people’s preferences for visiting beaches under hypothetical scenarios with offshore wind turbines visible from shore. Parsons et al. (2020) conduct one of the most comprehensive studies to date. They recruit a large sample of beachgoers that have visited beaches from Massachusetts to South Carolina. They present respondents with different scenarios in which 100 turbines are built at different distances from shore, and then ask respondents about their expected enjoyment of going to that beach or if they would change their trip. They also study curiosity trips, meaning if people would be willing to visit a different beach if turbines were present there. The authors find that distance does matter. When turbines are 2.5 miles off the coast, 29% of respondents stated they would not visit the beach, but this number drops to 5% when turbines are 20 miles off the coast. In addition, for the larger distances, they find that curiosity trips may offset any lost visits.

References

Carr-Harris, A., & Lang, C. (2019). Sustainability and tourism: The effect of the United States’ first offshore wind farm on the vacation rental market. Resource and Energy Economics, 57, 51–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.reseneeco.2019.04.003

Parsons, G., Firestone, J., Yan, L., & Toussaint, J. (2020). The effect of offshore wind power projects on recreational beach use on the east coast of the United States: Evidence from contingent-behavior data. Energy Policy, 144, 111659. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2020.111659

Trandafir, Simona; Gaur, Vasundhara; Behanan, Priya; Uchida, Emi; Lang, Corey; and Miao, Haoran (2020) "How Are Tourists Affected By Offshore Wind Turbines? A Case Study Of The First U.S. Offshore Wind Farm," Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics: Vol. 7: Iss. 1, Article 1. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15351/2373-8456.1127