The role of tourism in environmental pollution: evidence from Malta

ABSTRACT

This article searches the effects of tourism development on emission pollutants in Malta using (1) the autoregressive distributed lag approach and (2) two datasets which are annual data from 1971 to 2018 and quarterly data from 1990Q1 tı 2018Q4 as per data availability. Findings confirm that tourism, energy usage, and carbon dioxide emissions are in a long-term equilibrium relationship; carbon emissions converge rapidly towards the long-term equilibrium path through tourism and energy consumption channels. Findings also reveal that growth in tourism results in significant changes in energy consumption and, therefore, in CO₂ emissions. Tourism has positive effects on carbon emissions in shorter periods. Still, these effects turn out to be harmful in the more extended periods beyond the peak point of carbon emissions which correspond to 1,063,213 million tourists. Therefore, this study strongly confirms the existence of an inverted U-shaped Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis for Malta.

抽象的

本文使用 (1) 自回归分布滞后法和 (2) 两个数据集，即 1971 年至 2018 年的年度数据和 1990 年第一季度至 2018 年第四季度的季度数据，根据数据可用性搜索旅游业发展对马耳他排放污染物的影响。研究结果证实，旅游业、能源使用和二氧化碳排放处于长期平衡关系；碳排放通过旅游和能源消费渠道迅速向长期平衡路径收敛。调查结果还表明，旅游业的增长会导致能源消耗发生重大变化，从而导致二氧化碳排放量发生显着变化。旅游业在较短时期内对碳排放产生积极影响。尽管如此，这些影响在超过对应于 10632.13 亿游客的碳排放峰值点之后的更长时期内被证明是有害的。因此，本研究有力地证实了马耳他倒 U 形环境库兹涅茨曲线假说的存在。

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism development
• climate change
• Environmental pollution
• energy demand
• Malta

关键词:

• 旅游发展；气候变化；环境污染；能源需求；马耳他。

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Data for emissions and energy usage are not reported yet following Covid-19 since 2019.

1 The PP approach allows for the presence of unknown forms of autocorrelation with a structural break in the time series and conditional heteroscedasticity in the error term.