Abstract:

Tourism’s share of gross domestic product is gradually increasing. However, this sector can also cause environmental pollution. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the relationship between tourism and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 10 countries with the highest number of incoming tourists during 1995-2018. The panel Westerlund and Edgeworth approach is employed to evaluate the cointegration between variables. The empirical analysis confirms the existence of a long-run relationship between tourism and CO2 emissions. Augmented Mean Group (AMG) is used to estimate long-term coefficients. The results of the AMG estimator show that tourism increases CO2 emissions in France, China, Italy, and Turkey, and decreases them in Spain, United States of America (USA), Mexico, Germany and Thailand. The results of this study show that the international tourism industry in France, China, Italy and Turkey needs to be taken seriously from an environmental perspective. In addition, the newly developed Fourier Toda-Yamamoto (TY) Granger causality method was used in this study. The results of the Fourier TY Granger analysis state that a unidirectional causality relationship was found from tourism to CO2 emissions in Spain, Turkey and Mexico, from CO2 emissions to tourism in China and Germany, and a bidirectional causality relationship was found between tourism and CO2 emissions in the USA. No causal relationship between the two series was found in France, Italy, Thailand and England. Looking at the panel as a whole, it can be seen that there is a bidirectional causal relationship between tourism and CO2 emissions.

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