Do Tourism Activities and Urbanization Drive Material Consumption in the OECD Countries? A Quantile Regression Approach

Taiwo Temitope Lasisi,Luigi Aldieri,Concetto Paolo Vinci,Andrew Adewale Alola,Uju Violet Alola,Kayode Kolawole Eluwole

doi:10.3390/su13147742

Abstract

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) elaborately encompass a global goal for sustainable consumption and production (Goal 12: SDGs), thus providing potential drivers and/or pathways to attaining sustainable consumption. In view of this global goal, this study examined the role of real income per capita, urbanization and especially inbound tourism in domestic material consumption for the panel of OECD countries. The study is conducted for the period of 1995 to 2016 by employing the panel quantile approach. Interestingly, an inverted U-shaped relationship between outbound tourism and domestic material consumption is established across the quantiles, thus indicating that sustainable domestic consumption is achievable after a threshold of domestic material consumption is attained. In addition, achieving sustainable consumption through economic or income growth is a herculean task for the OECD countries because the current reality indicates that income growth triggers higher consumption of domestic materials. However, the results suggest that urbanization is a recipe for sustainable domestic consumption since there is a negative and significant relationship between the two parameters across the quantiles. Nevertheless, the study presents relevant policy for efficient material and resources utilization and that is suitable to drive the SDGs for 2030 and other country-specific sustainable ambitions.

Highlights

Over the last few years, economy-wide material flow accounts (EW-MFA) have been extended to identify the global use of raw materials linked to with a country’s final consumption [1]
The study suggests that a 1% increase in the international tourism arrivals to the panel of OECD countries triggers a maximum of a 3.53% increase in tonnes of domestic material consumption
Our findings support the proposed hypothesis which is that for OECD countries, increased tourism leads to increased domestic material consumption (DMC) which is in congruence with findings from Li et al.’s [33] study that suggests that tourism attracts a large number of migrant workers, increase in hotel stays, transportation use, etc. which results in large resource consumption and waste emissions

Summary

Introduction

Over the last few years, economy-wide material flow accounts (EW-MFA) have been extended to identify the global use of raw materials linked to with a country’s final consumption [1]. Such consumption-based accounts reinforce production-based MFA indicators and take into account the upstream material requirements of imported products in addition to the domestically produced materials. The SDG 12 is one of the main drivers for restructuring which is applicable to all SGDs and supports objectives related to resource use and efficiency across all SDGs. The goal delineates essential prerequisites to ensure resource sustainability (economic, natural, social, and human capital)

Methods

Results

Conclusion