Rural tourism has developed in recent decades with an increase in the activities available to tourists. In this article, the authors apply a cluster analysis for the segmentation of rural tourism in La Palma, Canary Islands. They consider the level of environmental attitudes of tourists as a variable explaining market segmentation. The results show that there is a large heterogeneity of market segments and that the traditional activity of agro-tourism represents a small share of the total market. The segments with a greater economic impact and producing greater tourist satisfaction are those in which tourists also exhibit higher levels of environmental behaviour. Thus, rural tourist destinations can improve their economic performance by focusing on those segments attracting tourists with higher environmental concern and by adopting policies that enhance the environmental profile of the segments.

This study examines the impact of water temperature on the optimal management of the ration size and fish weight in off-shore farm aquaculture. A model for the expected returns of the farm is developed which includes a fish growth function influenced by fish weight, the ration size and water temperature. The output transportation cost has an ambiguous effect on the harvesting size, but the impact of water temperature is positive. These results explain empirical evidence in the Canary Islands that unfavourable economic conditions could be overcome by environmental advantageous conditions raising productivity.

This paper presents an endogenous growth model for a tourism economy that takes into account the particular interrelationships between natural and physical capital, the production of tourist services and environmental degradation. The model considers both infrastructure and environmental attributes as production factors, characterized by a predator–prey relationship arising from the negative influence of the development of physical infrastructure on the natural capital. A general condition for economic sustainability is derived from the model analysis. In addition, the transitional dynamics obtained by using specific functional forms depict the empirically observed tourist life cycle and extend the optimal paths obtained from the classical Ramsey model to the context of tourism-based economies strongly dependent on fragile environmental resources.

León C. J. and Hernández Alemán A. Immigrants’ decision to stay in the Canary Islands: a latent class approach, Regional Studies. This paper presents evidence on the socioeconomic and psychological factors that explain international immigrants' decisions to stay in the Canary Islands. The data are modelled using a latent class binary approach that allows two types of migrant to be considered according to their level of probability of staying at the destination. The results show that psychological factors (negative emotions, expectations, social integration) are more important for those migrants with a low probability of staying. In addition, the circumstances at the destination (Spanish language, years of stay, number of migrations, remittances) are significant only for those migrants with a high probability of staying. These results have implications for immigration policies in both the origin and host regions.