MANOVA of Compositional Data with a Total

Resumen

Microeconometric analysis of tourist expenditure as a function of traveller characteristics has focused on total absolute expenditure, on absolute expenditures per trip budget parts, and in relative terms per trip budget parts. The analysis of absolute trip expenditure by budget parts confounds how much (budget volume) and how (budget allocation) tourists spend, while that of trip budget share ignores budget volume. In this paper, using tools of compositional data analysis with a total and MANOVA, we bring trip budget share and trip total expenditure together. Multivariate MANOVA tests are invariant to the choice of total, which may be e.g. the log geometric mean of any number of absolute expenditures of components. We show how trip budget components can be combined with a choice of total expenditure alternatives, according to the researchers’ questions. We provide an illustration with low cost airline users travelling to Spain. Results show that some variables affect only the expenditure allocation, some others affect only the total, and some affect both: how and how much tourists spend.