The Impact of Long Haul Destinations on Carbon Emissions: The Case of Mauritius

Abstract

With the continual increase in tourism and travel activities globally, there are serious allegations that the industry is significantly contributing towards climate change through its impact on CO₂ emissions. There are, to date, no empirical studies investigating the relation between tourism development and carbon emissions, which are debated to cause climatic changes. This article studies the impact that tourism and travel has on climate change for the case of Mauritius, a long-haul tourist destination. Assessing climatic change requires a significant amount of data over time. However, in the short term, the impact and contribution of tourism and travel-related activities on CO₂ emissions can be assessed given that time series data are available. Using an autoregressive distributive lag approach, we specifically examine the dynamic relationship between tourism activities and carbon dioxide emissions as a proxy of environmental degradation using data from the period 1978–2011. The estimated long-run and short-run parameters revealed that an increase in tourist arrivals has significantly and positively affected CO₂ emissions. This implies that the tourism and travel industry will have to adopt cleaner technologies to reduce CO₂ emissions to avoid climatic changes.

KEYWORDS:

• climate change
• CO₂ emissions
• time series
• autoregressive distributed lag

Notes

1. We have also used tourist receipts as an alternative to tourist arrivals, and the results do not differ greatly (with a coefficient of 0.07 obtained).