A Bimodal Discrete Shifted Poisson Distribution. A Case Study of Tourists’ Length of Stay

Abstract

Although the Poisson distribution is appropriate for modelling equi-dispersed distributions, it reflects bimodality less well. In this paper, we propose a distribution which is more suitable for the latter purpose. It can be fitted to both positively and negatively skewed data and appears to represent overdispersion phenomena correctly in count data models obtained using a Poisson distribution. Furthermore, the distribution can be normalised in terms of its mean value, and therefore covariates can be included. Our empirical results are based on tourists’ length of stay in the Canary Islands (Spain), a popular holiday destination. The study analyses data supplied by the Canary Islands Tourist Expenditure Survey. Our findings show that the model presented is valid and that the fit obtained is reasonably good.

Keywords

• bimodality
• covariate
• overdispersion
• shifted poisson distribution
• length of tourist stay