Tourism, Environment and Energy: An Analysis for China

International tourism as a cause of global warming is a controversial and topical issue. Here, we use the novel Morlet Wavelet time-frequency approach to gain a deeper insight into the dynamic nexus between tourism, renewable energy utilization, energy utilization and carbon dioxide emissions for China using annual data over the era 1974-2016. The techniques we use include Continuous Wavelet power spectrum, the Wavelet Coherency, and the Partial and the Multiple Wavelet Coherence for time-frequency decomposition that can capture local oscillatory components in time series. Our findings support the hypothesis that tourism can cause increased energy utilization and carbon dioxide emissions in China, which challenges the sustainable tourism development goal. However, on the positive side, the relationship between tourism and renewable energy utilization is shown to facilitate reduced environmental degradation in the medium-long run

Financial crises and the attainment of the SDGs: an adjusted multidimensional poverty approach

This paper analyses the impact of financial crises on the Sustainable Development Goal of eradicating poverty. To do so, we develop an adjusted Multidimensional Poverty Framework (MPF) that includes 15 indicators that span across key poverty aspects related to income, basic needs, health, education and the environment. We then use an econometric model that allows us to examine the impact of financial crises on these indicators in 150 countries over the period 1980–2015. Our analysis produces new estimates on the impact of financial crises on poverty’s multiple social, economic and environmental aspects and equally important captures dynamic linkages between these aspects. Thus, we offer a better understanding of the potential impact of current debt dynamics on Multidimensional Poverty and demonstrate the need to move beyond the boundaries of SDG1, if we are to meet the target of eradicating poverty. Our results indicate that the current financial distress experienced by many low-income countries may reverse the progress that has been made hitherto in reducing poverty. We find that financial crises are associated with an approximately 10% increase of extreme poor in low-income countries. The impact is even stronger in some other poverty aspects. For instance, crises are associated with an average decrease of government spending in education by 17.72% in low-income countries. The dynamic linkages between most of the Multidimensional Poverty indicators, warn of a negative domino effect on a number of SDGs related to poverty, if there is a financial crisis shock. To pre-empt such a domino effect, the specific SDG target 17.4 on attaining long-term debt sustainability through coordinated policies plays a key role and requires urgent attention by the international community

An assessment of environmental sustainability corridor: The role of economic expansion and research and development in EU countries.

Given that the European Union-28 countries proposed a target of 3% of the Gross Domestic Product on research and development (R&D) expenditure by 2020, the current study attempts to examine the role of R&D on environmental sustainability. In addition, the study further investigates the long-run and causal interaction between, renewable energy consumption, nonrenewable energy consumption, and economic growth in an ecological footprint function. Notably, the study incorporates research and development (R&D) expenditure to the model as an additional variable, and measures impact of each variable on ecological footprint. Empirical evidence is based on a balanced panel data between annual periods of 1997-2014 for selected EU-16 countries. The Pedroni, Johansen Multivariate and Kao tests all reveal a cointegration between ecological footprint, economic growth, research and development expenditure, renewable, and nonrenewable energy consumption. The Fully Modified and Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares models (FMOLS and DOLS) both suggest a negative significant relationship between the countries' research and development expenditure and ecological footprint in the long-run. This implies that spending on R&D significantly impacts on the environmental sustainability of the panel countries. Our study affirms that nonrenewable energy consumption and economic growth increase carbon emission flaring while renewable energy consumption declines ecological footprint. The panel causality analysis reveals a feedback mechanism between ecological footprint, R&D expenditure, renewable, and nonrenewable energy consumption. We further observed a one-way causality between ecological footprint and economic growth. Effective policy implications could be drawn toward modern and environmentally friendly energy sources, especially in attaining the Sustainable Development Goals via spending on R&D

Relationship between financial development and inbound tourism : a revisit

In this study, we use a more accurate and comprehensive indicator of financial development to examine the link between financial development and tourist arrivals and expenditures in the top 20 tourist destination countries over the period of 1995– 2017. By applying the panel augmented mean group method and controlling for other determinants of tourist arrivals, the overall results revealed that financial development positively influences tourism development. On the contrary, economic growth and countries price levels have no significant effects on tourism development. At the country level results; financial development has positive effects on tourism development in most countries. However, gross domestic product growth and consumer price index have a significant in few countries only. Therefore, the outcome of this study reveals that that visitors do not consider the development and the price level of the country but rather the facilities available including the facilities in the financial structures

[In Press] Investigating the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis : does government effectiveness matter? : evidence from 170 countries

The lack of studies that examined the influence of government effectiveness on environmental pollution and whether it formulates the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis motivated this research. Therefore, this research examines the role of government effectiveness on CO2 emission in 170 countries. To achieve the research aims, the system generalized method of moment model is applied while categorizing the countries into three groups: namely high, moderate, and low government effectiveness countries. The major results of this research revealed that government effectiveness reduces CO2 emission significantly in the overall sample, high and the moderate government effectiveness countries while it is not significant in the low government effectiveness countries. Moreover, the EKC hypothesis is present in the overall sample high and moderate government effectiveness countries while the hypothesis does not exist in the low government effectiveness countries. Therefore, the outcome of this research shows clearly that effectiveness of the government in terms of independence from political pressures, the quality of policy preparation and application, and the reliability of the government’s commitment to such policies is an important element that determines the EKC hypothesis. From the outcome of this research, a number of policy implications were provided for the investigated countries

Oil-induced environmental Kuznets curve in organization of petroleum exporting countries (OPEC)

This study investigates the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis in 10 of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). To realize the studys aims a time series model is built based on the period 1977-2008, utilizing the ecological footprint as an environmental indicator and income, labour, capital, oil consumption and oil price as economic indicators. Employing the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach, by comparing the short and long-run income elasticities, the EKC hypothesis is present in six OPEC countries namely Algeria, Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria, Qatar and Kuwait. Moreover, the Toda-Yamamoto-Dolado-Lütkepohl (TYDL) causality tests outcome show that, after oil consumption, the most significant factors in increasing ecological footprint are labor and capital. This implies the relocation of pollution intensive industries to almost all of the OPEC countries. However, oil prices reduce environmental damage by its negative effect on the ecological footprint. From the outcome of this study it is important for the investigated countries to reduce their consumption of fossil fuel energy since it represents an important source of pollution. This can be achieved by allocating more labor and capital in projects and investments on renewable energy, energy efficiency and energy saving

Digital adoption and its impact on tourism arrivals and receipts

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of digital adoption on international tourism arrivals and receipts. In recent years, several researchers have investigated the effect of information and communication technology (ICT) on tourism arrivals and receipts (for a review, see Adeola & Evans, 2019, 2020; Kumar & Kumar, 2020). They often find that ICT indicators (e.g., Internet users) have a positive and significant impact on tourism sector because ICT improves communication, increases payment efficiency, improves tourists’ experience, and supports decision making by making quality information available in a timely manner (e.g., Adeola & Evans, 2019; Law et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2018). Although there are several studies on the link between ICT and inbound tourism, the empirical research on the role of digital adoption on inbound tourism has received limited attention, especially across a large sample of countries over time. We utilize the “Digital Adoption Index” or digital dividends from the World Bank (2016a) to provide some new insights on the link between digital adoption and tourist arrivals and receipts. The Digital Adoption Index has two main advantages. Firstly, it reflects the amount of digital technologies being offered, and adopted, by all the key agents in an economy. Consequently, it delivers a more inclusive picture of technology dispersion than the current set of indices. Secondly, the index has been created using data on coverage and usage from the World Bank’s internal databases; hence, it is likely to be more robust than those studies based on perception surveys (World Bank, 2016b)

Agriculture investment, output growth, and CO2 emissions relationship

The purpose of this study is to examine the dynamic relationships between foreign investments in agriculture, domestic investments in agriculture, agricultural output, and greenhouse gases emissions from agriculture for a panel of countries over the period of 1990–2007. The panel cointegration and panel causality tests are applied in this study. The results show that there is a long-run causal relationship among all variables. The short-run dynamics suggest that there is a bidirectional causality relationship between agricultural output and greenhouse gases emissions from agriculture while there is no causal relationship between foreign investments in agriculture and domestic investments in agriculture as well as foreign investments in agriculture and greenhouse gases emissions from agriculture. It is also found that there is unidirectional short-run causal relationship from agricultural output to domestic investments in agriculture. The results provide some important implications for policy-makers