Tourism and Terrorism: The National and Interregional Economic Impacts of Attacks on Major U.S. Theme Parks

This paper is one of a series of studies by our group on the economic impact of a variety of terrorist attacks in the United States. These studies use either or both of two economic impact models, SCPM (the Southern California Planning Model) and NIEMO (the National Interstate Economic Model). This research uses only the latter model and traces the interregional economic effects of attacks on major theme parks (13, including two clusters) located in a modest number of States (eight). The theme parks are identified by State but not by metropolitan area to mask specific identity. It is important to note that our results are underestimates because our analysis, by focusing on the major theme parks, ignores some of the smaller parks. We have also omitted one park that would have passed the scale threshold. We left it out because the theme park was a relatively minor component of economic activities at the site.