Small sight—Big might: Economic impact of bird tourism shows opportunities for rural communities and biodiversity conservation

We measured the economic impact of bird watching through the following effects [33]. Direct effects: These effects are a result of actual bird watching expenditures. For example, a visitor purchasing a $200 bird watch tour would result in a $200 direct effect of bird watching. Besides direct effects there are additional impacts that occur through economic activity gener- ated by the initial direct expenditures. These additional impacts are also known as multiplier effects and include the following. Indirect effects: These effects arise due to linkages in the sup- ply chain, such as lodges purchasing goods and services from local suppliers, buying inventory, paying rent, or hiring service personnel. Induced effects: These effects are a result of employee household spending. For example, when a birdwatcher purchases binoculars at a local outdoor store, some portion of that dollar amount goes toward paying the wages of the sales personnel, who then re-circulate earned wages in other ways such as purchases at a local grocery. For any retail accounts presented in our modelling, we had IMPLAN apply the retailers’ margin to visi- tor spending in retail stores, to correctly estimate the economic impacts in the retail sector (French, 2019). The analysis quantified economic impacts of bird watching using the following metrics: Employment (jobs), which IMPLAN defines as the total number of all wage and salary employ- ees and self-employed jobs in a region. This job count includes both full-time and part-time

workers and can be considered as the annual average job count. It is comparable to employ- ment numbers reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development (ADLWD) [35,37,38]. Thus, one job lasting 12 months equal two jobs lasting six months or three jobs lasting four months, where a job can be either full time or part time. Since a person can hold more than one job, the job count is not necessar- ily the same as the count of employed persons. Labor Income includes all forms of employ- ment income, wages, benefits and proprietor income. The latter is important in the context of bird watching as many tour operators are independent sole proprietors. Value Added is another common measure of impact which includes labor income and payment to business owners, investors, landlords and government. It is analogous to Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Finally, we present economic model results in the form of Output which is a measure of the value of production in a calendar year, associated with all economic activity directly or indirectly related to bird watching expenditures. The IMPLAN event year was set to 2016 to be consistent with the most recent AVSP data collected in 2016. Output is commonly also referred to as annual revenue plus net inventory change [39]. All dollar values related to the presented economic impacts are in 2021 US dollars, adjusted for inflation [35]. We also used IMPLAN to estimate the generated state and local tax contributions associated with birdwatch-

ers’ expenditures [35]. Finally, we used IMPLAN to investigate the bird tourism sector’s con- tributions to the local, state, and federal tax base [35]. Besides the economic impact analysis, we further investigated differences between bird- watching visitors and visitors who did not engage in bird watching using R’s survey analysis package [40] (S1 Code). Results Birder spending and characteristics In 2016, Alaska received an estimated 294,500 visitors who indicated to have watched birds during their visit to Alaska. This estimate compares to the only historically available estimate of 157,290 in 2001 [7], suggesting a doubling of the bird watching niche market within this time period. On average, birders spent approximately 56% more per person than visitors who did not engage in bird watching, yet birdwatchers stated 9% lower household income compared to PLOS ONE Economic impact of bird tourism in Alaska PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268594 July 6, 2022 8 / 18