Analysis of the Impact of Overtourism in Japan: The Effects of Congestion Phenomena

The study presented in this chapter 3 estimates the tourism demand function of international visitors to Japan. The purpose of this is to analyze the impact of congestion phenomena on foreign visitors and to discover which economic variables affect their numbers. The demand function for international visitors to Japan was estimated by considering the TALC model for the top 9 prefectures and for the 6 prefectures with the largest number of international tourist visitors. From this, it was found that the effect of the number of visitors is sustainable in the prefectures where international visitors are most numerous. In the most popular tourist areas, however, it was found that TALC theory factors of reputation and congestion have a negative effect in following years. On the other hand, the elasticity of income in the country of origin is a positive influence, and the numbers of international visitors traveling to Japan will depend greatly on the incomes in the countries of origin. Further, the numbers were also affected by price changes. It seems that the reputation of tourist destinations will affect the future behavior patterns of international visitors. If so, governments, local governments, and tourism operators in popular destinations need to devise measures to reduce congestion phenomena.