Global economic impact of scuba dive tourism

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-2609621/v1

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Global economic impact of scuba dive tourism

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2609621/v1

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Ecotourism presents an opportunity to provide equitable benefits to local communities; serve as a platform for environmental education; and can be leveraged to support conservation initiatives, shifting away from traditional mass tourism and other forms of unsustainable marine use. Marine ecotourism sectors, such as scuba diving, whale and shark watching are increasingly important for local economies but their aggregate benefits are often overlooked in global ocean economy discussions. Here, we present a first estimation of the global economic value of scuba diving, including 11,500 identified scuba dive operators across the world. Based on an online operator survey, we estimate global annual revenue (direct diving expenditure in 2019) at between 0.9–3.2 billion USD per year, and the broader economic impact (direct and indirect expenditure) at between 8.5 and 20.4 billion USD per year. Marine tourism is one of the largest sectors in the ocean economy, and with 8.9–13.6 million marine diving tourists worldwide supporting up to 124,000 jobs, the scuba diving sector could be at the forefront of transformative change for local and global ocean equity and sustainability.

Earth and environmental sciences/Environmental social sciences/Environmental economics

Earth and environmental sciences/Environmental social sciences/Sustainability

Marine and coastal tourism is one of the largest sectors of the ocean economy, but ecotourism has only recently been recognized as a globally relevant sector, and it is often not differentiated as a unique subset of the tourism industry. While ocean-based tourism (e.g., beach and hotel-based tourism) is often well organized and vigorously participates in national and international political discussions, local marine ecotourism activities are often poorly considered, disorganized, and fragmented. ‘Ecotourism’ is used here to refer to activities that are based on participants’ observation and interaction with marine organisms and that specifically involve local benefits, education, and conservation initiatives¹. Prominent examples of ecotourism include whale and shark watching, nature viewing, and scuba diving.

Studies of marine tourism often focus on broad economic activity in ocean-adjacent areas, such as the GDP in the Caribbean or South Pacific Islands² or the benefits of cruise tourism for their ports of call ³. This is sometimes the case for studies on ecotourism; for example, Spalding et al. (2017)⁴ estimates the value of coral reef-adjacent tourism, but most research on ecotourism has focused on local benefits.

In the case of scuba dive tourism (snorkel and scuba diving businesses, diving schools, as well as diving charter businesses), activities have been studied around the world mainly at local or national scales^5–7 and for specific activities prominent specialties such as shark diving^8–10. For example, in Palau, shark diving generates US$18 million per year (~ 8% of the country’s GDP) ¹¹, in the Maldives annual total direct business revenue from divers is estimated at around US$43 million¹² and Mexican diving generates revenues up to US$725 million annually⁵. Reviews and metanalyses of this work suggest that dive tourism draws millions of participants per year ^13–16, but it is unclear what the global economic benefits and impacts of scuba diving are. To fill this knowledge gap, we designed a bottom-up study at the global level and surveyed over 420 dive operators across the world to provide the first global estimate of the economic expenditure generated by marine dive tourism.

Every year, an estimated 8.9–13.6 million divers and snorkelers participate in marine dive tourism activities worldwide, generating an estimated global revenue of between US$0.9 billion to US$3.2 billion annually (median of US$1.5 billion) (Table B1).

This range represents the direct dive-related expenditures received by scuba diving operators and was estimated using 425 responses from survey data across 81 countries (see Supplementary A for the survey). Dive-related expenditure includes total annual revenue dive operators receive from scuba dive certification, day trips and liveaboard trips (including snorkeling), and gear rental (for scuba diving and snorkeling). We pre-processed and obtained a cleaned dataset of automatically and manually validated diving operators that amounted to 11,590 geo-localized entries worldwide (Fig. 1) and a meta-analytical (value transfer) approach was applied to interpolate missing data (see Methods). Based on the annual number of participants and tourist expenditure data from the UN World Tourism Organization (WTO, 2022), global indirect expenditure from scuba dive tourism was estimated to be between US$7.6 billion and US$17.2 billion annually. These are expenditures are made by divers while participating in marine diving activities, including lodging and other local expenses (excluding international travel). Including both direct and indirect expenditures by dive tourists, the wider economic impact of global scuba dive tourism is estimated to be between US$8.5 billion and US$20.4 billion per year. In addition, 24 literature studies were identified that had to some extent estimated an economic value from scuba diving, which helped us gain a better understanding and an overview of economic data points at different local and national scales (Fig. 1 and supplementary Table B2).

To highlight the total annual revenue (total direct expenditure) of dive tourism by country we created a map displaying the USD amount in millions based on a color scale per country in each country’s territorial water, Exclusive Economic Zone (Fig. 2). Results show regions with the highest total revenues located in North America, Brazil, around central Europe, Southeastern Asia and Japan.

Data were separated between operators who offer day trip tours, including night dives, shore dives and any excursions where the client does not sleep on board the boat, and liveaboard operations, which include businesses designed for clients to sleep on board for a multi-day trip. Prices between day trips and liveaboard trips per person per day vary greatly, with a global average of US$76–114 for a day trip and US$208–270 per day for a liveaboard trip (Fig. 3). However, day trip prices across regions were relatively uniform, with slightly higher prices in the Americas, Asia, and Oceania. Liveaboard prices show much more variation across and within regions, possibly due to the smaller sample size and/or differences in the onboard accommodations. It is worth noting that liveaboard trips accounted for less than 1% of the total revenue generated per trip for all global dive operators captured in this study.

Employment varies greatly, especially between the high and low seasons, and ranges from the lowest data point in the low season with 28,000 jobs to 124,000 as the highest range in the high season (including both full-time and part-time employment). Survey results show that 80% of all employees are local nationals of the country the business operates in and the remaining 20% are hired from abroad. Local employment was slightly lower, though still quite high in Asia and Oceania, at 71% and 78%, respectively.

While our survey requested that operators consider their business pre-Covid-19 pandemic, we included a question about the economic impacts the pandemic has had on their business to better understand how badly the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted dive operators. Operators generally responded negatively, but some were very positive and stated that their revenue had increased since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. A dive operator from Central America, for example, stated that “business in 2021 & 2022 are better than ever, revenue is up 100%”. Other comments were not specific to the economic situation of the business but explained how Covid-19 has impacted the ecosystem. For example, a dive operator from a South Pacific island stated that reefs themselves were healthier but fish populations were not: “Reefs have improved dramatically since Covid19 lockdowns. Fish life has decreased dramatically since Covid19 lockdown due to villagers needing to support and feed family after losing jobs”. Other operators have clearly been struggling since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. For example, an operator from South Asia wrote: “COVID-19 didn't just change our business. It destroyed it. We have effectively started a new business in 2021. Our past experience in operations and budgeting has no value in the present market. It has been devastating. We are still hopeful as this is our passion and we feel also our calling.”

Dive operators were also surveyed regarding the ecological contexts around the dive sites, including the most important natural attractions for their businesses. Figure 4 shows these results, separated by tropical and temperate dive operations. Operators in tropical areas clearly highlighted reefs and the biodiversity associated with them, including corals, fishes, turtles, and sharks (Fig. 4). Dive attractions in more temperate regions showed a wide range of attractions, from reefs to kelp to ice and marine mammals (Fig. 4). Operators were also asked about environmental changes or impacts on the environment they have observed over the last 10 years. Operators located in tropical areas reported more negative ecological impacts than operators located in temperate regions (Fig. 5) but, notably, there were many examples of positive perceptions of local change in both tropical and temperate ecosystems.

The results of this study help consider the economic benefits of scuba diving within marine ecotourism and place it as a potentially key sector in establishing a Blue Economy. One of these inherent benefits is the local nature of ecotourism operations; the 11,590 dive operators and 124,000 jobs we identified in this study are distributed across 170 different countries (Fig. 1). The 8.9–13.6 million diving tourists per year and the US$8.5–20.4 billion in total expenditures that they generate similarly occur at these local scales but add up to global benefits. A comparable ecotourism sector is whale watching, which has been estimated to generate around US$2.1 billion in 2003 (around US$3.4 billion in 2022 dollars accounting for inflation)¹⁷ from 3 million whale watchers, supporting ~ 13,000 jobs¹⁸.

3.1 Limitations of the study

Our study has important limitations that must be addressed in future work. First, the scope of the estimation comprises only expenditures on dive trips, gear rentals, dive certifications, and associated travel and lodging but does not include broader economic impacts from gear manufacturing and sales, or other revenue streams generated through international scuba associations (e.g., PADI, NAUI, SSI). Second, indirect expenditures by participants (travel, food, accommodations) were estimated assuming their average trip costs are equal to general tourism data collected and available through UNWTO. Local economic studies of dive tourism (Fig. 1) were not enough to adjust expenditures in our model, though they suggest that generally the mean trip expenditures of scuba dive tourists, especially for foreign tourists, are higher than those of tourists in general. For example, based on Haas et al. (2017)¹⁹ a scuba dive tourist spends around US$1,200 on average per day in The Bahamas, where the WTO reported an average spending per tourist per day of around US$500 (both values in 2019 USD). In Colombia, general tourists spend US$1,500 per trip, whereas Trujillo et al (2017)²⁰ report that scuba dive tourists spend almost US$2,000 (see supplementary Table B2). This means that our estimates of the total diving industry’s economic impact are very likely conservative. Third, our web-scraping approach to identify all dive operators was based on Google data, and while the PADI dataset was a useful addition, we were very likely unable to capture all existing dive operators. Fourth, we opted for an online survey due to the ease of reaching the widest number of operators during the unfortunate challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic and we fully recognize that in person interviews and workshops would have improved our data coverage and quality. While response rates were sufficient for a narrow error margin of ~ 4% at the global level, future efforts should focus on in-person survey efforts wherever possible, building from existing research to provide more accurate local data. Because our questionnaire was designed to align with standards in this field, we hope that this first global effort can be used as a baseline for future research.

3.2 Scuba dive tourism and the blue economy

It has become apparent that major transformations are needed across all marine sectors to successfully establish Blue Economies that are socially equitable, ecologically sustainable and economically viable^21–25. However, despite increased research on the economic benefits of ecotourism^{12,13, 26–30} the sector as a whole is often regarded as an adjacent asset in the Blue Economy discourse³¹. We argue that the ecotourism sector can be a key player with its local-based activities such as scuba diving, providing benefits and lessons important for needed transitions toward a successful blue economy ³², and to enable progress on broader UN Sustainable Development Goals.

This study further highlights that the scale of economic impacts from marine ecotourism is globally significant, yet the better alignment between social and ecological goals in ecotourism is just as significant for its role and influence within a Blue Economy. This is similar to related discussions on the outsized role that artisanal (small-scale) fisheries have in a Blue Economy, given that they are already better aligned with social equity goals compared to larger industrial operations²³. This alignment already exists in ecotourism but may also be relevant to other forms of marine tourism. For example, annual expenditures of surf tourism have been estimated at between US$31.5 and- 64.9 billion (this includes travel costs), from 17–35 million surfers annually³³. Surfing does not require marine living resources but could be included within ecotourism given its overwhelming focus on local benefits and conservation education and actions. Recreational fishing also has significant economic impacts, with approximately 58 million anglers spending around US$39.7 billion USD in 2003 (US$65 billion in 2022 dollars¹³). Of course, recreational fishing requires more specific guidelines to be sustainable³⁴, yet has the potential for large positive impacts on marine ecosystems and local economies. The global cruise ship industry generates a total estimated output of US$150 billion and supports 1.18 million jobs³, however, there are significant criticisms over its environmental and cultural impacts³⁵ as well as the economic volatility of the business itself³⁶. Most of the income from marine tourism still comes from mass tourism developments. In China, one of the biggest ocean-based economies across the world, coastal tourism has been identified as the biggest contributor to the overall value of the ocean economy, with growth rates of over 20% each year throughout the last 10 years³⁷. With large-scale negative effects from land displacement, habitat destruction, and pollution observed in coastal destinations globally^38–40, it will be difficult to credibly include all of mass marine tourism within the intended goals of a Blue Economy. Yet positive transformations are possible and should be widely pursued.

3.3. Scuba diving ecotourism, conservation and local economies

Ecotourism has long been proposed as an alternative livelihood in coastal regions, particularly given the possibility of converging local economic and conservation goals^28,30,41,42. Tourism as the main income source for coastal communities can be risky, as the tourism sector exposes vulnerability to changes in demand and shifts in the global economy, clearly highlighted through the Covid-19 pandemic and supported by our results which show how dive operators have been struggling. These are considerable drawbacks that need to be taken into account when discussing the potential of scuba dive tourism as a driver for local economies and ecotourism. Knowledge and perspectives from local dive operators need to be included in marine spatial planning processes. Survey results show that most operators are concerned about negative ecological changes around their dive sites (Fig. 5). But observed positive changes, both in temperate and tropical regions, need also be further highlighted as this type of information should be collected to learn where conservation endeavors have potentially been successful. Diving has also undergone important shifts that must be understood by policy-makers to better integrate the sector within wider efforts to implement Blue Economies. For example, while the most important ecosystem attractions are still large marine species, such as sharks, dolphins, or coral reefs, the increased accessibility of underwater photography has increased interest in small or unusual organisms and ecosystems; something that can be observed in photography contests with more common macro-photography categories. Muck diving (i.e., scuba diving along the muddy sediment of the ocean floor) alone has been estimated to contribute ~ US$150 million in Indonesia and the Philippines alone attracting over 100,000 divers annually⁴³.

Although marine protected areas (MPAs) have shown potential for successful marine conservation such as in coral reef ecosystems (Graham et al., 2020), MPAs (and other top-down approaches) designed in developed countries alone are often not adequate strategies for countries where most coral reefs are located⁴⁴. Bottom-up approaches such as community-based conservation initiatives and locally-managed marine areas have been shown to lead to higher success rates^14,45,46, particularly when traditional, Indigenous and local knowledges are integrated into adaptive management as well as in decisions on whether and what areas to “protect”^21,46,47. Our survey revealed that the vast majority of scuba dive operators are already contributing to local, regional and national conservation initiatives, with the remainder expressing willingness to be involved. Importantly, though we do not have information about ownership and benefits sharing, 80% of employees in our surveys were reported to be local and not hired from abroad; the perspectives of these local people are essential for considering the benefits and impacts of dive tourism for communities around the world.

With diving operators spread across all coastal countries and having a stake in healthy marine ecosystems, the diving sector should play a key role when it comes to integrated coastal management and the establishment of a Blue Economy. Importantly, the local knowledge of both owners and workers of dive businesses should be fully included in coastal management decision-making processes. Like other marine sectors, government oversight is important to ensure that the social, ecological, and economic goals associated with diving corporations are indeed aligned and contributing to equitable and sustainable communities. Mass coastal tourism has often been shown to contribute to the marginalization of local communities and the degradation of coastal and marine environments. In a Blue Economy that aims for socially equitable and environmentally sustainable marine industries, the economic scale and lessons of dive tourism and other forms of ecotourism can be essential for guiding the expansion of new ventures and transforming other ocean sectors.

5.1 Data collection

To estimate the economic impact of scuba diving and snorkeling tourism globally, we applied a similar approach used, for example, in global estimates of recreational fishing (1) and shark watching expenditures (2), economic impacts from commercial fisheries (3), and regional estimates of ecotourism expenditures (4). Here, we developed a methodology that comprises six main steps (Fig. 6). The first step aimed to create a database and geographic map of all scuba diving operators, compiled through a combination of web scraping and manual review and our collaboration with PADI. This database represents the baseline for information gathering and subsequent economic analyses.

The second step entailed developing and distributing an online survey across all scuba diving operators, with survey design and key questions drawn from methodologies (and key gaps) in available research. The third step developed a meta-analysis (benefit transfer) model across regions and countries to fill data gaps where no information was available. This model explicitly incorporates sensitivity analyses to provide global results recognizing uncertainty.

Based on this information, step four calculated direct expenditures by participants with dive operators. Indirect expenditures, that is, spending by dive tourists on local travel and accommodations aside from their spending on the dives themselves, were calculated in step five based on survey results and data made available through the UN-World Tourism Organization. In the sixth and final step, all expenditures were combined and formed the basis for the subsequent presentation of results at various geographic scales. The sections below expand on each of the methodological steps. Code and data to reproduce our results are available at a dedicated repository: https://github.com/annaschu/Global_scuba_dive_economics .

We extensively used a technique called "web-scraping," which indicates a process to automatically obtain information from the World Wide Web and store data in a human-readable format (e.g., a data table). We web-scraped Google Maps and obtained diving operator names, contact information, and other metadata about their businesses. Each of the final web-scraped operator data points was manually checked to determine if the business was an actual dive operator if it was still active, and whether it offered liveaboard trips or day-trip activities. With the help of collaborators from Tourism Research in Economics Environs and Society (TREES), North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa, an additional 571 operators across Africa were identified and added to the web-scraped dataset. Another manual search revealed 39 dive operator businesses in mainland China, which the web-scraping activity did not pick up due to Google limitations within the country. Additionally, we received a global dataset containing around 6,000 dive businesses from PADI that we merged with our operator datasets, where almost 4,000 of those were new entries that had not been captured in our dataset.

We designed a survey that investigates the economic value of local dive businesses and assesses their attitudes toward different conservation regulations. This survey was built using SurveyMonkey. Accompanying the survey is an FAQ page in which participants can find additional information on why a specific question is being asked. The ethics boards have approved this survey at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD) (2010112XX) and the University of British Columbia (UBC) (H21-00687). A data agreement has been signed among UCSD, Centro para la Biodiversidad Marina y Conservación (CBMC), and UBC to access the raw data of these surveys. The survey can be found in supplementary material A.

The survey contained a total of 44 questions and was sent out to all unique email addresses obtained from the diving operator web scraping activity and has been promoted with the help of PADI and DAN Europe, among others. Given the global scope of this study, the survey was designed to collect as much information as possible and, at the same time, avoid survey fatigue. The survey was piloted with a focus group, in which we gathered feedback and updated our survey accordingly. The surveys were translated into 12 different languages. In addition to the economic part of the survey, we also asked the dive operators to provide their opinions about ecological perceptions of their dive sites, the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on their business and whether they had any interest to participate in conservation-based initiatives.

Besides the survey, a dataset was added that provided a total of 145 additional data points for prices of scuba diving day trip activities that were acquired by visiting individual websites of about 1,000 dive operators by collaborators at the Environmental Markets Lab (EmLab) at the University of California, Santa Barbara. As these data initially presented the price per dive and the survey asked for the price per day trip, we assumed after some online research and talking to experts in the field (in addition to the authors' expertise) that an average day trip comprised two dives. We therefore multiplied the price per dive by two to match the survey results and integrate the data. Another 104 data points exclusively from Mexico were added from Arcos-Aguilar et al. 2021, presenting scuba and snorkel clients and the price per dive and snorkel for each operator.

All answers have been sought for the time before the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, and all final monetary values have been converted from their original currencies into 2021 USD. The full dataset of diving operators combined with their survey responses is available https://github.com/annaschu/Global_scuba_dive_economics .

5.2. Estimation methods

This step estimates the total gross revenue of all dive operators worldwide, the number of annual participants and the total number of jobs directly supported based on results from the global online survey. The data is organized by country, subregion, region, and globally to transfer benefits and fill gaps where no original data point was collected. The dive operator data created during the web-scraping process and completed with the additional operator data forms the backbone of the analysis. The model aims to attain a complete dataset with a data point for each dive operator for each survey component, originating either from the submitted survey entries or from the median and quantiles calculated based on data points within the same country or subregion. The approach is based on the key assumption that missing data points can be derived using available data from similar cases. The benefits from existing data points are transferred and used to estimate the missing data points. The conceptual outline of the model and the datasets used as input information are presented in Fig. 7. Uncertainties in estimates have been explicitly highlighted by including confidence intervals for each estimated result. In addition, we applied a Jackknife loop, a resampling method that randomly excludes a set of data points to recompute the final estimates systematically. Medians and quantiles were then calculated based on the new recomputed estimates.

Based on the literature and the author's experience with dive and snorkel tourism operations, we grouped survey answers into day trips and liveaboard trips. Day trips are diving and snorkeling tours lasting less than 24 hours, including single or half-day trips (including day and night dives, shore dives, boat dives, or other activities that include snorkeling or diving). On the other hand, liveaboard trips are overnight tours that last more than one day. The reason for doing this split is that we assume total revenues and costs will be very different for dive operators running a liveaboard business, which is usually an all-inclusive type of dive trip package (similar to a cruise ship) compared to an operator who offers day trips.

Total annual revenue consists of the monetary values of scuba dive certification, day trips and liveaboard trips (including snorkeling), and gear rental (for scuba diving and snorkeling). A combination of part-time and full-time equivalent employment is presented for low and high seasons. The number of scuba dive tourists is also presented for low and high seasons, including all-day trips and all liveaboard scuba diving clients.

For creating a global map of scuba diving revenue, the attribute table of the total annual revenue per country was joined with geographical data on the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) layer and was then exported to create this map. The natural breaks classification method was used to classify countries based on their revenue into five groups. This method put similar values of annual revenue together to maximize the differences between classes.

5.3. Total economic impact

With additional data from independent secondary sources, we also estimate the indirect expenditure of scuba dive tourism and the total economic impacts of the global dive tourism industry. First, we estimated the average annual spending per tourist per country. This was done based on international tourist arrivals and annual expenditures using global datasets from the UN-WTO (World Tourism Organization (2021), Compendium of Tourism Statistics dataset [Electronic], UNWTO, Madrid, data updated on 02/02/2021). Inbound tourism is defined as arrivals of non-resident visitors (overnight visitors -tourists- and same-day visitors -excursionists-) at national borders and the expenditures as in total annual expenditure in USD. The mean tourist expenditure per day was then multiplied by the total number of scuba dive tourists derived from our study first to estimate the total indirect expenditure of all tourists globally. We then continued to add the result of this value to this study’s global total revenue estimate to compute the broader economic impact that scuba dive tourism has worldwide.

Data availability

https://github.com/annaschu/Global_scuba_dive_economics

Acknowledgements

We thank Samuel Clarke for python and data science support and to Katie Thompson for collaborating and providing dive operator data information from PADI. We are also thankful to National Geographic Society (Project Funding number: PS 2021 003A) for funding this research.

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Global economic impact of scuba dive tourism

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Abstract

Figures

1. Introduction

2. Results

3. Discussion

3.1 Limitations of the study

3.2 Scuba dive tourism and the blue economy

3.3. Scuba diving ecotourism, conservation and local economies

4. Conclusion

5. Methods

5.1 Data collection

5.2. Estimation methods

5.3. Total economic impact

Declarations

Data availability

Acknowledgements

References

Additional Declarations

Supplementary Files

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