This study examines the relationship between governance quality and outbound tourism expenditure. Annual panel data for 54 countries over the period 1996–2023 are analyzed using symmetric and asymmetric panel ARDL models. The results highlight the existence of a long-run relationship between governance quality and outbound tourism expenditure. The symmetric ARDL results indicate that governance quality exhibits a significant negative long-run effect on outbound tourism expenditure, suggesting that improvements in governance quality reduce residents’ spending on international travel. The effect remains significant only in low-governance countries when the sample is separated into low- and high-governance countries. The asymmetric ARDL results further reveal that positive governance shocks significantly reduce outbound tourism expenditure, while negative shocks increase it only in high-governance countries. Overall, the findings highlight the important role of institutional quality in shaping tourism consumption behavior and provide policy insights for managing tourism-related outbound expenditures.
Ullah et al. (Wed,) studied this question.