On the relationships between tourism demand, carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth: a literature review

ABSTRACT

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and economic growth are fundamental determinants of international tourism demand. This study is a review of 105 studies on the relationships between tourism demand, CO2 emissions and economic growth that analyses the main results of this literature, detailing the proxies that are used to represent the main variables in question, the indicators used for their measurement, the geographical areas of analysis, the statistical and econometric methods used, and the main results obtained. The analysis shows the state of the art in this field of research, showing its limitations and suggesting several lines for future research at an empirical, conceptual, and methodological level. The study concluded that greater emphasis should be given to statistical and econometric modeling and to the investigation of other variables affecting the relationships between tourism demand, CO2 emissions and economic growth.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism performance; economic growth
• CO2 emissions; comprehensive review
• tourism-led growth hypothesis
• environmental Kuznets curve

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• Z32
• Z38
• C32
• Q5
• L83

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

Verónica Segarra: Contributions: conceptualization, methodology, writing and editing. Juan Gabriel Brida: Contributions: conceptualization, methodology, writing and editing. Pablo Juan Cárdenas-García: Contributions: conceptualization, methodology, writing and editing.