Does freedom of the press enhance inbound tourism?

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the effects of the freedom of the press on inbound tourism in 160 countries for the period from 1995 to 2016. By using the fixed-effects, the Hausman–Taylor, and the dynamic panel data estimation techniques, we show that a higher level of the freedom of the press promotes inbound tourism. The main findings are robust to consider the countries at the different income level, the inclusion of the various control variables, using the different measures of the freedom of the press, excluding the outliers, and excluding the observations in the different regions.

KEYWORDS:

• Inbound tourism
• tourist arrivals
• tourism demand
• freedom of the press
• institutional quality
• panel data estimation techniques

JEL Codes:

• Z32
• C33
• P48

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Note that we also use the level of the freedom of the press index in the empirical analysis.