A UTSA researcher is examining how the flight routes people take to get to tourist destinations impact the amount of pollution in the air in a newly published study he coauthored in the Annals of Tourism Research.
“This paper provides one of the first efforts to quantify the carbon emissions associated with tourist air travel in the continental United States,” explained Neil Debbage, assistant professor of geography and environmental sustainability in UTSA’s Department of Political Science and Geography.
The researchers wanted to know whether nonstop routes to tourist destinations can mitigate air travel carbon emissions compared to connecting routes through big airline hubs.
Using International Civil Aviation Organization data, USTA researchers analyzed carbon emissions for direct and connecting routes between the 10 most-populated metropolitan areas in the northeastern United States (New York, Philadelphia, Boston, etc.) and 13 different tourist destinations located in the Sunbelt and Western regions of the United States (Bexar County, Texas; Los Angeles County, California; Miami-Dade County, Florida; etc.).
Read more at: University of Texas at San Antonio