Carrying Capacity as an Emergent Property: Dynamic Modeling and Adaptive Governance of Marine Wildlife Tourism
Description
This repository contains the complete Stata estimation and simulation code for the Adaptive Tourism Carrying Capacity (ATCC) model (M10.3-BASE-LOCAL) developed for humpback whale-watching governance in Samaná Bay, Dominican Republic (2026 season). The model treats carrying capacity as an emergent property of the joint nonlinear interactions among four stochastic subsystems (ecological, physical-spatial, institutional management, and social) connected through a precautionary minimum operator across 2,000 Monte Carlo iterations. The code is organized in two parts: (1) an empirical calibration pipeline for each domain, drawing on three primary survey instruments (Single Observer Form, Institutional Management Register, and Social Domain Survey); and (2) a self-contained integration engine that reproduces all main text results without the raw survey data, using pre-calibrated parameter values. Key outputs include the ATCC probability distribution, percentile-based regulatory quotas, exceedance probabilities against observed domestic demand, and the structural constraint dominance profile by management zone.
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Steps to reproduce
Carrying Capacity as an Emergent Property: Dynamic Modeling and Adaptive Governance of Marine Wildlife Tourism Authors: Víctor Gómez-Valenzuela, Claudia Caballero González, Ana B. Pou-Espinal Model: ATCC M-BASE-LOCAL (Seed: 20260426) Overview This repository contains the Stata code used to estimate and simulate the Adaptive Tourism Carrying Capacity (ATCC) model. The model conceptualizes carrying capacity as an emergent property of four stochastic subsystems. All results reported in the article can be reproduced using the self-contained simulation engine included in the code. Repository Contents ATCC_Supplementary_Code.do (Stata 17 or higher) Part I (S1.1–S1.3): empirical calibration routines requiring original survey datasets. Part II (S2.1–S2.7): standalone simulation engine using calibrated parameter values. This section reproduces all published results without access to raw data. Typical runtime: 3–5 minutes. Replication Open Stata 17+, set the working directory to the repository folder, and run do "ATCC_Supplementary_Code.do" Part II executes automatically and reproduces all results reported in the article without requiring external datasets. Outputs include ATCC estimates, domain-specific capacities, dominant limiting-domain frequencies, management indicators, operational pressure metrics, and exceedance probabilities. Data Availability Raw datasets are not included due to ethics and confidentiality restrictions: FUO 2026: ecological monitoring database KGEST 2026: institutional management registry KSOC 2026: social perception survey Data may be available from the corresponding author, subject to institutional approval procedures. Funding and Independence Primary field data collection was financed by ITM Group through a consultancy agreement with DIGECSA, SRL. The sponsor had no role in study design, analysis, interpretation, or publication decisions. All scientific analyses were conducted independently by the authors. Acknowledgements The authors thank the Centro para el Ecodesarrollo de la Bahía de Samaná (CEBSE) for access to humpback whale monitoring data used in ecological calibration. Citation Gómez-Valenzuela, V., Caballero González, C., & Pou-Espinal, A. B. (2026). Carrying Capacity as an Emergent Property: Dynamic Modeling and Adaptive Governance of Marine Wildlife Tourism. License: CC BY 4.0 Corresponding author: Víctor Gómez-Valenzuela (INTEC, Dominican Republic)
Institutions
- Instituto Tecnológico de Santo DomingoNacional, Santo Domingo