The relationship between GDP and marine tourism: a quantitative approach

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate how the real gross domestic product per capita in the Oceania region is influenced by tourism. Oceania is an area of the South Pacific Ocean, which contains many varied collections of islands. The total geographical area is around 3.3 million square miles. The study re-assesses the tourism growth led hypothesis in a panel set of 11 countries of Oceania over the time 1995 to 2018. The main explanatory variable is tourist arrivals controlling for carbon emissions, foreign direct investment, population growth and human development. The novelty of this paper lies in applying new and more robust econometric (cointegrating) methods to confirm the tourism-induced growth hypothesis, in a multidimensional background. The results confirm the tourism growth led hypothesis up to a level, after that the negative externalities subsume the positive gains from tourism, so the direction of this paper is towards renewing the scope of analysis of ocean tourism in a sustainability framework.