Do Tourism Activities and Urbanization Drive Material Consumption in the OECD Countries? A Quantile Regression Approach

Taiwo Temitope Lasisi, Kayode Kolawole Eluwole, Uju Violet Alola, Luigi Aldieri, Concetto Paolo Vinci and Andrew Alola
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Taiwo Temitope Lasisi: School of Tourism and Hotel Management, Bahcesehir Cyprus University, Lefkoşa 99010, Turkey
Kayode Kolawole Eluwole: School of Tourism and Hotel Management, Bahcesehir Cyprus University, Lefkoşa 99010, Turkey
Uju Violet Alola: Department of Tourism Guidance, Istanbul Gelisim University, Istanbul 34310, Turkey

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 14, 1-13

Abstract: The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) elaborately encompass a global goal for sustainable consumption and production (Goal 12: SDGs), thus providing potential drivers and/or pathways to attaining sustainable consumption. In view of this global goal, this study examined the role of real income per capita, urbanization and especially inbound tourism in domestic material consumption for the panel of OECD countries. The study is conducted for the period of 1995 to 2016 by employing the panel quantile approach. Interestingly, an inverted U-shaped relationship between outbound tourism and domestic material consumption is established across the quantiles, thus indicating that sustainable domestic consumption is achievable after a threshold of domestic material consumption is attained. In addition, achieving sustainable consumption through economic or income growth is a herculean task for the OECD countries because the current reality indicates that income growth triggers higher consumption of domestic materials. However, the results suggest that urbanization is a recipe for sustainable domestic consumption since there is a negative and significant relationship between the two parameters across the quantiles. Nevertheless, the study presents relevant policy for efficient material and resources utilization and that is suitable to drive the SDGs for 2030 and other country-specific sustainable ambitions.

Keywords: sustainable consumption; domestic materials; real income; international tourism; quantile regression; OECD (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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