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

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.

Urbanization and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission nexus in the CEMAC countries

“…The study unveiled a U-shaped relationship between the variables and that urbanization Granger causes CO 2 emissions. Lasisi et al (2021) investigated the role of real income per capita, urbanization and tourism on domestic material consumption in OECD countries from 1995 to 2016 employing the panel quantile technique. The results revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship between outbound tourism and domestic material consumption across the quantiles.…”

How Do Chinese National Scenic Areas Affect Tourism Economic Development? The Moderating Effect of Time-Limited Rectification

“…Control variables: To capture the character of the city where a CNSA was located, several control variables, such as economic development ( x 1 , measured by per capita gross domestic product), consumption ( x 2 , measured by per capita retail sales of consumer goods), industrial structure upgrading ( x 3 , measured by the shares of tertiary industry in the local gross domestic product), infrastructure ( x 4 , measured by per capita urban road area), green rate ( x 5 , measured by the green coverage rate of built-up area), the air pollution of sulfur dioxide ( x 6 , measured by per capita emission of sulfur dioxide), the air pollution of dust ( x 7 , measured by per capita emission of dust), and the liquid pollution of wastewater ( x 8 , measured by per capita emission of wastewater), were employed by referring to the studies in [ 4 , 7 , 12 ].…”

“…For instance, except for CNSAs and time-limited rectification, other influencing factors, including government cooperation and environmental regulation, may have remarkable effects on tourism economic development [ 8 , 10 ]. In addition, to achieve an optimal balance of economic development and conservation of environmental resources, how the tourism economy affects the local ecological environment, energy consumption, and urbanization may be potential investigation directions, which also has great theoretical and practical significance for similar emerging countries [ 1 , 4 ].…”

“…Faced with the dichotomous challenge of balancing the quest for economic growth and its associated risks for the environment, the tourism economy has taken central stage among scholars and policymakers at home and abroad for its features of cleaner production and sustainability [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. In particular, over the past 40 years, China’s tourism industry has stimulated economic activities thereby serving as a great catalyst for economic growth [ 5 ].…”

Public preference for sustainable land use policies – Empirical results from multinomial logit model analysis

“…Here, preference comes under the legitimacy value of the instrument selection criteria. Although a sustainable environmental condition is a common interest (Lasisi et al, 2021;Malik et al, 2019), people prefer to accept different policy instruments. For example, (Rissman et al, 2017) found high support for regulatory and market-based water quality policies and relatively low support for policies that rely on voluntary action.…”