Tourism and Economic Growth: A Meta-regression Analysis

Abstract

Numerous studies have focused on delineating the relationship between tourism and economic growth. In this article, we present the results of a rigorous meta-regression analysis based on 545 estimates drawn from 113 studies that empirically tested the tourism-led growth hypothesis (TLGH). The results suggest the presence of publication bias in the literature on this topic, where the majority of studies report positive and statistically significant estimates. Findings provide support for the TLGH, but they also suggest that the estimates are sensitive to a number of factors that are related to country data, specification, and estimation characteristics, and time span. Such sensitivities suggest that greater emphasis should be placed on reporting estimates of the relationship between tourism and economic growth across a variety of methodological characteristics and specification and estimation choices. The implications of the results for theory development are also discussed.

The relationship between tourism and economic growth in the EU-28. Is there a tendency towards convergence?

“…The impact of tourism on economic growth has been examined by numerous authors: Alfaro Navarro et al (2020); Antonakakis et al (2019); Calero and Turner (2020); Cheng and Zhang (2020); Estol and Font (2016); Ivanov and Webster (2013); Neuts (2020); Nunkoo et al (2020); Roudi et al (2019); Santamaria and Filis (2019); Sokhanvar (2019); Tang and Tan (2016); Tang (2020); Vergori and Arima (2020) and others. Tourism contributes significantly to economic growth all over the world (Figini & Vici, 2010), has a strong impact on the environment (Hall, 2011), facilitates, when practiced responsibly, sustainable development, and has a remarkable contribution to progress, since there is an overlap between economically developed countries and those with developed tourism sector (C ardenas-Garc ıa et al, 2015;Kum et al, 2015;UNCTAD., 2013;UNWTO., 2017).…”

“…Tourism development depends on numerous economic, social and infrastructural factors, like transport (Borodako & Rudnicki, 2014), geopolitical conditions (Santamaria & Filis, 2019), foreign direct investments (Sokhanvar, 2019), culture, peace, security, infrastructure, visa facilities, natural environment, people, tourist number, education, income level, price level (Khan et al, 2020), the country dimension and development (Lin et al, 2019), cultural heritage and natural resources (Dugulan et al, 2010) as well as many other factors related to economic growth and development (Nunkoo et al, 2020;Santamaria & Filis, 2019;Sokhanvar, 2019).…”

Systematic Literature Review of Tourism Growth Nexus: An Overview of the Literature and a Content Analysis of 100 Most Influential Papers

“…[no. 9]: The study by Nunkoo et al (2019) is a meta-analysis. So, it is a completely different category of analysis based on rigorous procedures.…”

“…Hundreds of papers have looked into tourism-growth nexus and each paper has conducted literature reviews in one way or another. We have identified seven independent TLRs Madden and Shipley (2012), Pablo-Romero and Molina (2013), Brida et al (2013), Brida et al (2016), Gwenhure and Odhiambo (2017), Calero and Turner (2019), whereas three papers have done meta-regression analysis Castro-Nuño et al (2013), Nunkoo et al (2019), and Fonseca and Sánchez Rivero (2019). A short description of these literature review papers is given in Section 2.…”

Explaining Heterogeneity in the Effect of the Exchange Rate and Exchange Rate Volatility on Foreign Direct Investment: A Meta‐Analysis Approach

“…Since the pioneering contribution of Stanley and Jarrell (), meta‐analysis is today very widely used and accepted in economics as a technique to investigate heterogeneity in reported empirical results. Recent application of meta‐analysis in economics includes Havranek and Irsova (2012a, 2012b) on the determinants of horizontal spillovers from FDI, Sannassee et al (), and Nunkoo et al () on the causal relationship between tourism and economic development. This methodology helps to have a broad perceptive on the matter as it uses evidence reported for many different countries with different economic levels and types of policies and therefore allowing us to investigate the hypotheses that are difficult to verify when focused only on a single country.…”