Evaluating ecological footprints through inbound tourism, population density, and global trade

Abstract

Environmental damages are largely visible by the man-made actions in general, including an enormous increase in international tourism, huge pressure on arable land by increasing population density, and global international trade. These stated factors are mainly responsible for ‘ecological footprints’ across the globe. The present study considered these factors in order to evaluate ‘ecological footprints’ in a panel of 130 countries for a period of 1995-2018. The dynamic differenced GMM estimator is used for empirical illustrations. The study used different regression estimators in order to get robust inferences and found that inbound tourism is the main detrimental factor of global environment that causes ‘ecological footprint’, which further exhibit the ‘inverted U-shaped’ relationship between them. Further, population density and countries economic growth first increases and later decreases ecological footprints to support ‘inverted U-shaped relationship between them. The Granger causality results unable to verify the ‘tourism –led growth’ or ‘growth –led tourism’ hypothesis, while it shows ‘no causal’ relationship between them, although highly correlated in the regression estimates. Ecological footprint and population density both Granger cause inbound tourism, while the bidirectional relationship found between trade and inbound tourism. Sustainable tourism policies are highly needed to limit ecological footprints across countries.