Jhana Aristondo, Utah Valley University
Tourism in Utah is largely driven by seasonal recreation at its variety of natural-heritage resources. The greatest impacts of tourism have been found mostly during summer and winter months, where recreational sports take the lead in many different activities. Utah is home of the ‘mighty’ five national parks: Canyonlands National Park, Arches National Park, Capitol Reef National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park. From 2000 to 2016, the number of visitors to these parks has increased from 5.3 to 10 million visitors—an increase of 47 percent in merely 16 years— and has generated more than 625 thousand jobs since 2010. During winter months, Utah’s fourteen ski resorts attracts an average of 4 million visitors and supports an estimated 18,000 jobs across the entire state. Recreational spending by tourists and travelers has created a positive impact on Utah’s economy. In 2015, tourists’ expenditures set a high record of $8.17 billion in Utah, which generated $1.15 billion in total state and local tax revenues. This inflow of revenue and the jobs it creates spurs economic development within the state. This study uses VAR — a bivariate vector autoregression model — to examine the relationship between tourism growth and the non-Income Human Development Index between years 2000 and 2016, and applies the Granger Causality test to determine the casual nature of the relationship. We find evidence of tourism as an economic development tool, which not only accounts for economic growth in revenues, but the improvement of lives among Utah residents— seen through the increase in output highly dependent on human development and improvement in social welfare.