Cruise ship levies - design, implementation and impacts: international evidence review
This report sets out the findings of a desk-based review of the evidence on the impact of cruise ship levies in the context of international jurisdictions.
7. Annex A: Review Methodology
7.1 Methods
A period of 13 weeks was available for completion of this rapid evidence review. To conduct the review, a systematic process of search and assessment was followed, involving three broad stages:
1. Evidence search
2. Application of inclusion and exclusion criteria for assessing relevance
3. Synthesis of the body of evidence
The details of stages one and two are described below. The synthesis of evidence is presented in sections three and four of the review.
7.1.1 Search Process
In the first instance, the search for studies was carried out by the Scottish Government Library Service using KandE, Proquest and Knowledge Network. These are online search engines which cover a range of high-quality databases. Following on from this, sweeping and snowballing searches using Google Scholar and Google’s Advanced Search functions were conducted to gather studies and grey literature sources (such as government publications, digital newspapers, and online news publications) that would not have been found through the searches of peer-reviewed materials. An overview of all the studies reviewed for this research can be found in Annex B.
This search was informed by a range of key words and phrases, including the following terms:
- Cruise tourism
- Tourist Tax
- Cruise
- Cruise Levy
And focused, initially on publications related to the following destinations:
- Amsterdam:
- Barcelona
- Dubrovnik/Croatia
- Venice
- Balearic Islands
- Norway
These destinations were selected following discussions with policy colleagues which highlighted that these destinations would be important based on prior available research. The search was then expanded to include global cruise destinations including all European cruising destinations, Caribbean, North America and Arctic cruise destinations.
7.1.2 Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
Using the initial search results, the relevance of the studies was assessed. The table below provides a summary of the inclusion and exclusion criteria applied to the selection of the studies.
| Inclusion Criteria | Exclusion Criteria | |
|---|---|---|
| Aim of Study | Studies exploring cruise ship levies or taxation and key issues surrounding the economic, social and environmental impacts of cruise tourism on jurisdictions, governments and residents | Studies exploring other issues related to cruise tourism such as: cruise line operations, and cruise tourist experiences |
| Language | Written or available in English | Not written or available for translation to English |
| Publication date | 2010-2024 | Pre-2010 |
| Publication Type | Journal articles, peer-reviewed materials, working papers, evaluation, government reports, discussion papers, books and book chapters, digital news articles and other academic research | Student papers, conference papers, news articles without clear indication of source |
Applying these criteria led to an evidence base comprising a wide range of sources, including academic journal articles, surveys, case studies, systematic literature reviews, interviews, books, newspaper or online news articles and government reports.
Key destinations highlighted in the review were selected based on the availability of data and the level of impact, and subsequent government response, to cruise tourism in those jurisdictions.
7.2 Limitations
With regard to the limitations of the review, firstly, due to the relatively short timescale of 13 weeks available for conducting this review, a rapid review of the evidence rather than a full systematic review has been undertaken. As a result, the review is not intended as an exhaustive critical appraisal of the research evidence.
Secondly, due to the international nature of this review, in some cases, language presented a barrier, as not all publications were readily available in English. Given the timeline for this review, this resulted in a bias towards those cases where documentation was available in English.
Finally, a further limitation of the review is the nature of the evidence itself – specifically, cruise ship levies are part of a developing policy landscape and only recently introduced in many jurisdictions (Biagi, Brandano, and Pulina, 2020). As a result, in some jurisdictions considerations of a levy are still ongoing, and in some other jurisdictions the levies have not been in operation long enough for data on their impacts to be available yet. Thus, there was limited evidence available in relation to certain jurisdictions. Where applicable, these limitations have been acknowledged in each of the relevant cases. Cruise ship taxation and specifically, cruise tourism taxes are a relatively new phenomena within a developing policy landscape. This means that both practice and policy in this area are changing frequently and it is likely that new data may become available in the future.