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

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.

Exploring the Impact of Economic Growth on the Environment: An Overview of Trends and Developments

“…Many researchers identified the key role of energy patterns (primary and final energy consumption), energy type (renewables nonrenewable), and source (industrial, commercial, household) when elaborating on the impacts and causalities between economic activity and the environment (indicatively, Refs. [22,30,76]). Growth in demand leads to major shifts in the way that individuals and nature interact, in the scale at which this occurs, and most notably, in the environmental schemes in which this happens.…”

“…On the contrary, Refs. [36,76] proposed a different disaggregated approach. They tested tourism proxies as growth variables (e.g., the direct contribution of tourism to a nation's GDP and business and leisure market segments) to confirm the U-shaped curve suggested by the T-EKC.…”

Comparing the Substitution of Nuclear Energy or Renewable Energy for Fossil Fuels between the United States and Africa

“…The environmental Kuznets curve indicates that environmental protection decreases with economic growth under a certain national income level, while environmental protection conversely increases with economic growth as the national income accumulates over a certain level. From the perspective of the environmental Kuznets curve, at early stages of economic development, the economy is prioritized over environmental protection, but as the economy develops, environmental protection is prioritized over the economy to a certain extent [1][2][3]. To examine the environmental Kuznets curve, this work focuses on the highly economically developed United States and economically underdeveloped Africa.…”