Tourism water use during the COVID-19 shutdown: a natural experiment in Hawai'i

ABSTRACT

Many popular tourist destinations are on small islands whose resources are in limited supply, and the effects of climate change and burgeoning tourism tend to worsen the outlook. In this study, we identify the relationship between tourism and water use on the Hawaiian island of O'ahu. Hawai'i closed almost entirely to tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic, which provides a unique natural experiment to study the relationship between tourism and water use. We estimate a 1% decline in the number of tourists was associated with a 0.4% to 0.65% lower water use in the hotel sector. However, no such relationship was found in the Airbnb market, which we hypothesize is due to work-from-home arrangements in the residential sector during the pandemic.