Relationships Among National Tourist Destination Arrivals, Effective Governance, Environmental Performance, and Human Development

Abstract

AbstractCompetition among destinations for tourism steadily increased over the past few decades. Extant literature emphasizes tourist travel motivation, destination choice, decision making, and trends such as responsible tourism, medical tourism, and ecotourism. This study adds value with an empirical macro national approach that investigated relationships among tourist arrivals, national environmental performance, human development performance, and national effective governance (voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption). World Bank, World Economic Forum, and United Nations secondary data across 124 countries from 2016 were analyzed. Government effectiveness, political stability and absence of political stability and absence of violence, human development index and population were associated with the number of tourism arrivals. National environmental performance was not associated with tourism arrivals. Implications for future research and practice are offered.KeywordsTouristGovernanceEnvironmental performance