The nexus between tourism development, environmental quality and economic growth. Does renewable energy help in achieving carbon neutrality goal?
International Journal of Energy Sector Management
ISSN: 1750-6220
Article publication date: 22 March 2023
Issue publication date: 5 February 2024
Abstract
Purpose
The current study aims to ascertain the association between tourism development, economic growth and environmental quality by using the short-run and long-run autoregressive distributive lag model.
Design/methodology/approach
Tourism development has a major role to play in improving a nation’s economic growth. However, it is also blamed for exacerbating environmental pollution because of its massive use of energy (non-renewable energy).
Findings
The major findings of this research show that renewable energy (RE) use and gross domestic product (GDP) negatively impact carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in South Africa. Tourism arrivals and CO2 emissions negatively impact GDP, while capital positively impacts GDP in the long run.
Practical implications
This research recommends the use of RE, since it reduces carbon emissions, and capital, as it remains the major driver of economic growth.
Originality/value
The originality of the current research is that it uses long-period annual time series data from 1971 to 2019 of South Africa, one of the largest tourist nations in Africa. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no studies have examined South Africa in this context and minimal research has been conducted to ascertain the impact of the tourism industry on the environment, despite the accusations directed toward it.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Funding: No funding was received from any organization.
Availability of data and materials: The data used in this paper are secondary data and were retrieved from data.oecd.org and from data.worldbank.org
Consent to publish: The authors guarantee that this manuscript has not been previously published in other journals and is not under consideration by other journals. The authors also guarantee that this manuscript is original and is their own work.
Authors contributions: AD: Conceptualization, Methodology. CB: Writing – original draft, Software. HK: Data curation, Writing – review. HO: Editing, Supervision. SHR and ASM: Visualization, Investigation.
Citation
Banga, C., Deka, A., Ringim, S.H., Mustapha, A.S., Özdeşer, H. and Kilic, H. (2024), "The nexus between tourism development, environmental quality and economic growth. Does renewable energy help in achieving carbon neutrality goal?", International Journal of Energy Sector Management, Vol. 18 No. 2, pp. 294-311. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJESM-07-2022-0011
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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