Identifying the Carbon Emissions Damage to International Tourism: Turn a Blind Eye

Zahid Yousaf,Muhammad Khalid Anser,Khalid Zaman,Usama Awan,Muhammad Moinuddin Qazi Abro,Abdelmohsen A Nassani

doi:10.3390/su12051937

Abstract

The importance of sustainable tourism is largely discussed in environmental literature under two different main streams: first, an ample amount of literature is available on the role of international tourism in economic development; second, the existing literature mainly focused on estimating tourism carbon footprints across countries. Limited work has been done on identifying the cost of carbon emissions on the tourism industry, which is evaluated in this study to fill the existing literature gap by using a large panel of 132 countries between 1995 and 2018. The results show that carbon emissions damage, methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, and population density substantially decrease inbound tourism and international tourism receipts that result in an impact on the increase in international tourism expenditures across countries. The ex-ante analysis shows that inbound tourism will likely decrease from 19.546% to 16.854% due to an increase in carbon emissions damage of 0.357% to 1.349% for the period 2020–2028. Subsequently, international tourism expenditures will decrease from 19.758% to 12.384% by increasing carbon emissions damage from0.832% to 1.025%. Finally, international tourism revenues will subsequently decline from23.362% to 18.197% due to lowering carbon emissions damage from 0.397% to −0.113% over a time horizon.

Highlights

The evaluation of the true cost of carbon emissions on economic sectors is needed for the globalized world to formulate sustainable economic policies in order to limit negative environmental externalities [1]
The estimated coefficients are less elastic in nature, as the cost of carbon emissions on inbound tourism revealed its high impact on INTL_TOUR receipts, which is about to decrease by −0.164%
The results show that inbound tourism will substantially decline due to increase carbon emissions damage, N2O emissions, and population density, as the average change of 0.992% in the carbon emissions, 0.588% in N2O emissions, and 2.299% in population density led to a decrease inbound tourism of about 2.692% for the period 2020–2028

Summary

Introduction

The evaluation of the true cost of carbon emissions on economic sectors is needed for the globalized world to formulate sustainable economic policies in order to limit negative environmental externalities [1]. International tourism (INTL_TOUR) is the leading service sector in terms of revenue generation in most of the developed and developing countries that are affiliated with high carbon costs [2,3]. The substantial decline was viewed in industrial emissions and coal production in the European Union, the United States, and India, as these economies largely cut their carbon output. The coal-fueled growth in China has been substantially declining since 2010, which limits emissions to an average increase of 0.9%, where coal is substituted by cleaner production technologies, renewable fuels, and sustainable infrastructure development

Results

Discussion

Conclusion