Can Business and Leisure Tourism Spending Lead to Lower Environmental Degradation Levels? Research on the Eurozone Economic Space

George Halkos and George Ekonomou
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George Ekonomou: Department of Economic and Regional Development, Agricultural University of Athens, Amfissa Campus, 331 00 Amfissa, Greece

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 7, 1-16

Abstract: This study aims to investigate the impacts and identify the causal links between tourism expansion and the environment among countries of the Eurozone from 1996 to 2019 in the context of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). To achieve this end, we used a new set of untested tourism proxies when elaborating the EKC. We disaggregated the tourism phenomenon and highlighted its heterogenous nature by including specific and high-impact market segments such as business and leisure tourism spending as well as capital investment spending. The research findings indicate the pivotal role that tourism proxies have on environmental degradation in terms of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Specifically, the identified reciprocal causalities between leisure and investment spending and environmental degradation suggest some complementarities between these variables. In the case of business tourism spending, an increase (decrease) in this variable leads to an increase (decrease) in environmental degradation. The last two feedback hypotheses indicate that the primary and final energy consumption Granger cause GHGs and vice versa. Such a result offers evidence for incorporating the concept of energy efficiency in tourism. Practical implications should motivate supply and demand dimensions within the tourism system to improve efficiency in tourism flow management. The supply side should transfer the environmental message to visitors to spend wisely and consume smarter, whereas the demand side should perform pro-environmental behavior by spending wisely and acting responsibly at destinations.

Keywords: environmental protection costs; capital investments; greenhouse gas emissions; economic and mathematical modeling; environmental efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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