Environmental consequences of tourism: do oil-exporting countries import more CO₂ emissions?

ABSTRACT

The study explores the impact of international tourism on consumption-based CO₂ emissions in the case of Azerbaijan for the period of 1995–2013. The results of the long-run estimations revealed that the relationship between CO₂ emissions and international tourism revenues is N-shaped. This finding also indicates that the EKC hypothesis does not hold in the case of Azerbaijan. The found curvature of the relationship and the positive impact of tourism on CO₂ emissions are in line with the expectations, considering the developing path of the country. Moreover, the impacts of imports and exports are found to be positive and negative, respectively, which are in line with the expectations and with the theoretical findings discussed in the theoretical framework section. The positive impact of tourism and the higher impact of imports highlights the importance of utilizing the environmentally friendly policies in tourism activities as well as in international trade relations.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism’s impact on environment
• consumption-based CO₂ emissions
• environmental Kuznets curve
• exports
• imports
• resource-rich country

Highlights

It is a first study using consumption-based CO₂ emissions for evaluating the impact of tourism on environmental degradation.

It is a first study in the tourism-environmental impact literature which examines the contribution of imports and exports on CO₂ emissions separately in the case of oil-exporting country.

It discusses and suggests an alternative specification for the impact of imports and exports on CO₂ emissions.

Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to the editors and anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions. They would like also to thank Judith Fish for her copy edit. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of their affiliated institutions.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Notes

¹ Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) was introduced by the World Bank Development Report (1992), and popularized by Grossman and Krueger (1993), and Grossman and Krueger (1995), among others. Environmental degradation and income relationship captured by the EKC resembles inequality and income relationship described by Simon Kuznets (1955).

² Exports of energy products by Azerbaijan: crude oil (including gas condensate), natural gas, Liquefied gases, Motor gasoline, Kerosene, Diesel fuel, Fuel oil, Petroleum coke, Lubricants, Electricity, etc. (SSCA 2018).