Traveling for happiness, moving to adapt: An agent-based perspective on population mobility

The paper proposes using agent-based modeling (ABM) to unify the study of tourism and migration under a single 'population mobility' framework. It highlights how both are driven by the pursuit of wellbeing and are increasingly influenced by global environmental change. The author details how ABM's ability to handle agent heterogeneity, internal decision-making complexity, and social interactions makes it ideal for simulating complex social-ecological systems. The discussion explores common challenges, such as the 'sense of invasion' felt by locals in mass tourism hubs like Venice and Barcelona, and the role of migration as a legitimate adaptation strategy to climate change. The paper concludes that a combined perspective can better address economic sustainability, cultural identity preservation, and the impacts of global environmental change on human movement.

• Agent-based modeling (ABM) is proposed as a unifying methodology for tourism and migration research because it can simulate the complex feedbacks between human and natural components in social-ecological systems, moving beyond aggregate models like the 'gravity model' or the Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC).
• Population mobility is increasingly driven by global environmental change, with migration serving as a legitimate adaptation strategy. Examples include residents of the Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea relocating due to coastal erosion and people in Bangladesh moving to cities to avoid continuous flooding.
• Climate change is projected to cause significant population displacement, with estimates suggesting up to 1 billion people could leave their homes by 2050. Africa is expected to be particularly affected, contributing 40–50% of the 90–1,320 million people in developing countries at risk of hunger by 2080 due to losses in suitable cropland.
• Mass tourism can lead to social conflict and outmigration in historic cities. In Venice, the tourists-to-residents ratio is at least one for eight months of the year, contributing to a population decline from 175,000 inhabitants in 1951 to 56,000 in 2015.
• The 'sharing economy', exemplified by platforms like Airbnb, creates a tension between providing 'authentic' local experiences and exacerbating tourism monocultures that can crowd out diversified local economies and circumvent regulations, as seen in Barcelona.
• Global environmental change affects population mobility at both the origin and destination. At the origin, it can push people to move through slow-onset degradation (e.g., desertification) or sudden hazards; at the destination, it can alter the 'pulling factors' of a location, such as increasing the appeal of mountain regions during metropolitan heat waves.
• The author suggests that the concept of 'carrying capacity'—traditionally used in tourism to determine the maximum acceptable number of visitors—could be applied to immigration to assess the sustainability of assimilation processes regarding job markets and public services.

APA

Balbi, S. (2017). Traveling for happiness, moving to adapt: An agent-based perspective on population mobility. Basque Centre for Climate Change. https://www.bc3research.org/h6T8Uy8Nm4gFs0O/201709190249052060064480.pdf

Chicago

Balbi, Stefano. Traveling for happiness, moving to adapt: An agent-based perspective on population mobility. Basque Centre for Climate Change, 2017. https://www.bc3research.org/h6T8Uy8Nm4gFs0O/201709190249052060064480.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Balbi |first1=Stefano |title=Traveling for happiness, moving to adapt: An agent-based perspective on population mobility |publisher=Basque Centre for Climate Change |date=September 2017 |url=https://www.bc3research.org/h6T8Uy8Nm4gFs0O/201709190249052060064480.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{balbi2017traveling, author = {Balbi, Stefano}, title = {{Traveling for happiness, moving to adapt: An agent-based perspective on population mobility}}, institution = {Basque Centre for Climate Change}, year = {2017}, month = sep, url = {https://www.bc3research.org/h6T8Uy8Nm4gFs0O/201709190249052060064480.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }