Chance in the challenge – Positive environmental externalities in the tourism sector through COVID-19

Abstract

Due to the spread of COVID-19, a global pandemic situation has developed since December 2019, which has serious effects on the various economic sectors, affecting the tourism sector secondary and tertiary industries. To analyse the effects of the European tourism sector on CO2 emissions, we model emissions together with tourism indicators. The model allows esti-mating the impact of the tourism sector on greenhouse gas emissions, distinguishing them from time and space effects. The model’s results suggest a positive impact of tourism arrivals and tourism-related expenditure on CO2 emissions, meaning that the decrease in tourism con-tributed to the overall decrease in CO2 emissions to a significant extent. Analysing the spatial autocorrelation, data show that all countries we investigated are similarly affected by a reduc-tion in tourism and there appears to be no regional differentiation of impacts by COVID-19. To conclude the model’s results, the reduction in emissions can be explained to a part by the reduction in travel, which points to the potential in this relation that could be used as a lever-age in conceptionalising measures to reduce CO2, targeting the tourism sector