Interaction between air transportation, tourism and CO2 emissions: The panel ARDL approach

The tourism sector is directly linked to air transportation, with air travel accounting for a large share of global travel demand. However, air transportation increases environmental impacts and poses a significant threat to sustainability due to its high carbon emissions. In this context, the relationship between tourism and air transportation is a critical area that requires the development of policies and practices to reduce the carbon footprint. This study investigates the dynamic link among tourism, air transportation and CO2 emissions for the period 1995-2019 in 10 Mediterranean countries. To investigate the relationship between our variables, autoregressive distributed lag approach is used. According to ARDL long run estimations, it is stated that the increase air transportation increases the CO2 emissions. Similar to air transportation, increase in tourism and economic growth results in an increase in CO2 emissions. Finally, causality test of Dumitrescu and Hurlin is applied. Causality results stated 2 causalities between variables. There are unidirectional causalities from CO2 emissions to air transportation and from tourism to CO2 emissions. Also, policy and further research implications are discussed regard to selected countries.