GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS, INBOUND TOURISM DEMAND, AND INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY: WHERE IS THE LINK?

Abstract

The world experiences an increase in greenhouse gas emissions linked to human activities such as information and communication technology (ICT) and tourism activities. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of ICT and inbound tourism demand on greenhouse gas emissions in South Africa. The study involved annual time series data (1989-2020), and this data was analysed using autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) and Granger causality models. The empirical results indicate that a 1% increase in inbound tourism demand causes the level of greenhouse gas emissions to increase by 0.52% in the long-run, but inbound tourism demand has no short-run effect on greenhouse gas emissions. On the other hand, ICT only has a short-run effect on greenhouse gas emissions. The results also show that there is a unidirectional causal relationship between greenhouse gas emissions to ICT and inbound tourism demand.