Tourism development and material footprint: a disaggregate analysis of top ten tourist destination countries

This empirical work analyzes the impact of tourism arrivals, tourist receipts, tourist expenditure, active population, and population density on environmental quality. Unlike previous studies, this study employed a consumption-based indicator of environmental quality, which is the material footprint. Given the significance of major tourist destination countries, a sample of the top ten tourist destinations has been selected for the analysis over the period 1995–2018. The study applies econometric tools that consider the issues of cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity. The findings of cointegration show a significant long-run relationship between the variables. Similarly, pooled mean group results indicate a positive impact of tourist arrivals, tourist expenditure, and active population on the material footprint, while a negative impact is observed in the case of tourist receipts and population density. The robustness of long-run results has been examined with the help of Panel corrected standard errors. Moreover, the Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel causality test shows unidirectional causality from tourist arrivals and tourist receipt to the material footprint and unidirectional causality from the material footprint to tourist expenditure in the long run. According to our results, some policy implications have also been highlighted.