Services trade–ICT–tourism nexus in selected Asian countries: new evidence from panel data techniques

ABSTRACT

Consistent with the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 8 (implement policies to promote sustainable tourism), 9 (provide infrastructure for universal and affordable access to the Internet), and 17 (promote international trade), this study interrogates the services trade-ICT nexus on sustainable tourism in Asia. Using an unbalanced panel data on 44 East Asia and Pacific and South Asian countries from 2010 to 2019 it probes the discourse using tourism receipts, trade in services, and four ICT indicators (mobile phones, Internet users, fixed broadband, and secured internet servers). In broader terms, this study addresses two questions: whether ICT usage and services trade individually impact tourism and if the interaction of ICT influences or erodes the impact of services trade on tourism? Deploying the PSCC-LSDV and MM-QR robustness techniques, findings reveal that (1) services trade and ICT individually promote tourism; (2) the negative interaction effect of services trade and ICT is not sufficient to erode the enhancing-impact of services trade; (3) effect of services trade and ICT usage and their interaction significantly differ across the sub-regions; and (4) effect of services trade and ICT usage is heterogeneous across the quantiles. Policy recommendations are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Asia
• ICT usage
• services trade
• tourism
• PSCC-LSDV
• moments quantile regression

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/10/28/2115771/0/en/Global-Telecom-Network-Outsourcing-Industry.html.

2 See Appendix table for the list of countries and their respective classifications.

3 We use region rather than country dummies because the latter will require 44 dummy variables which will significantly weaken the efficiency of the estimator. Hence, 2 regional dummies are created which align with the objectives of this paper. The dummy for South Asia is the base region dummy variable.

4 Weighted least squares.

5 With the exception of the robustness results provided in Table 3, the robustness results for the rest analyses are not presented but will be made available upon request. This is to avoid proliferation of Tables.

6 The differential is obtained by deducting the coefficient of the interaction term from that of services trade.

7 The coefficient of services trade is significantly not different from zero.

8 Results related to Table 6S and Table 7S are available in the supplementary files.