Sources of Variation in Economic Impact Multipliers

The conceptual arguments and empirical analyses in the article illustrate that when tourism organizations replicate economic impact analyses and/or compare their results with those reported by others, perceived differences often are specious because they are attributable to artifacts in multiplier measurement as well as to changes in the structure of host economies. Four sources of variation in multipliers that may result in specious comparisons are addressed: differences in specifications of the three main types of models used in economic impact analyses, semantic and definition confusion, changes in communities’ economic structures, and calibration and decision rule changes.