Multidimensional decomposition of Gini elasticities to quantify the spatiotemporality of travel and tourism distribution / Pong-Lung Lau, and Tay T.R. Koo.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 12-13).

The paper aims to harness the decomposability properties of the Gini index to quantitively measure the spatiotemporality of tourism distribution. To achieve this, paper presents a methodological development termed enhanced subpopulation-source decomposition (ESSD) method, which relates the geographic variation and seasonality through Gini elasticity. These elasticities, or relative marginal effects, are additive such that the spatiotemporality of a special event held in a destination over a period of time, or the spatiotemporality of the changes in travel flows to a group of destinations, or both, can be additively and simultaneously measured. The analysis enables destinations to be classified into groups based on the space-time trade-off, revealing insights about destinations that are spatial concentrators as well as temporal ‘sinks’ or destinations that are geographic dispersers yet contributors to seasonal intensification. Although this paper focuses on the travel and tourism industry, the developed method is general and applicable to many situations.