Abstract
This paper aims to evaluate the overarching relationships between International Inbound Tourism Demand (IITD), regional trade integration and Renewable Energy Transition (RET) in the context of selected South Asian economies between 1990 and 2016. The results from the panel data econometric analyses, accounting for cross-sectional dependency and slope heterogeneity issues, showed that higher degrees of intra-regional trade between the South Asian economies exert positive impacts on the IITD in South Asia. Similarly, undergoing a RET was found to stimulate the IITD further. Besides, the joint favorable impacts of regional trade integration and RET on South Asia’s IITD were also ascertained. Therefore, these findings impose key policy implications concerning the pertinence of strengthening regional trade cooperation between the South Asian neighbors and boosting renewable energy consumption for enhancing the IITD further.
Highlights
Sustainable international tourism, intra-regional trade integration and renewable energy consumption have been acknowledged to exhibit overarching relationships
This paper aims to probe into the dynamic impacts of regional trade integration and Renewable Energy Transition (RET) on International Inbound Tourism Demand (IITD) in the context of selected South Asian economies, namely Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal, between 1990 and 2016
IITD in South Asia was found to be positively influenced by the per capita electricity consumption and national income levels of the South Asian host economies, which is similar to the findings reported by Ibrahim [16] for Egypt
Summary
Sustainable international tourism, intra-regional trade integration and renewable energy consumption have been acknowledged to exhibit overarching relationships These three-way associations are of greater relevance for South Asian economies, due to South Asia being a prime tourist destination for foreign tourists in particular. The existent low electrification rates and insufficient grid-connectivity across South Asia have dampened the number of tourist inflows within this region [4] Under such circumstances, augmentation of renewable energy into the national energy-mixes of South Asian countries is thought to be a credible means of facilitating off-grid electrification across the tourist destinations which, in turn, can be hypothesized to simultaneously harness the sustainability of IITD in South Asia [5]. This process of replacing the use of non-renewable energy resources with renewable alternatives is referred to as the Renewable Energy Transition (RET) phenomenon [6] which is pertinent in relieving the monotonic fossil fuel dependency of developing economies in particular
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