Tourism, economic growth, and tourism-induced EKC hypothesis: evidence from the Mediterranean region

This paper investigates the relationship among CO₂ emissions, energy consumption, economic growth and tourism development using data for a panel of 18 Mediterranean countries over the period 1995–2010. The findings from cointegrating polynomial regression indicate that the tourism-induced environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis is confirmed for three out of nine countries for which cointegration tests suggest a long-run equilibrium relationship between the examined variables. A group of causalities have been found for the Mediterranean countries. In particular, our results demonstrate bidirectional causality between GDP and tourism development for the Northern Mediterranean countries, while for the southern and global panel we document one-way causality running from tourism development to economic growth. We also show unidirectional causality running from tourism to CO₂ emissions across regions. The empirical results suggest that Mediterranean countries should place more emphasis on tourism development, sustainable tourism in particular, given the potential relationship among tourism development, GDP and CO₂ emissions.