The Impact of Technology, Economic Development, Environmental Quality, Safety, and Exchange Rate on the Tourism Performance in European Countries

The study investigates the contribution of technology (TECH), quantified by Internet penetration, in influencing tourism performance (TP) among the top ten touristic nations in Europe: France, Spain, Italy, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Germany, Greece, Austria, Portugal, and the Netherlands. Using panel data from 2000–2022, the study includes additional structural controls like environment quality, gross domestic production (GDP) per capita, exchange rate (ER), and safety index (SI). The Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) is employed to capture heterogeneous effects at different levels of TP, and Driscoll–Kraay standard error (DKSE) correction is employed to make the analysis robust against autocorrelation as well as cross-sectional dependence. Spectral–Granger causality tests are also conducted to check short- and long-run dynamics in the relationships. Empirical results are that TECH and SI are important in TP at all quantiles, but with stronger effects for lower-performing countries. Environmental quality (EQ) and GDP per capita (GDPPC) exert increasing impacts at upper quantiles, suggesting their importance in sustaining high-level tourism economies. ER effects are limited and primarily short-term. The findings highlight the need for integrated digital, environmental, and economic policies to achieve sustainable tourism development. The paper contributes to tourism research by providing a comprehensive, frequency-sensitive, and distributional analysis of macroeconomic determinants of tourism in highly developed European tourist destinations.