Tourism Growth Trap and Environmental Sustainability: How Tourism Dependence Shapes Development Pathways and Carbon Emissions in Asia

Tourism is widely regarded as an engine of economic growth, yet its environmental consequences remain contested. Existing studies largely treat tourism as a homogeneous activity, overlooking whether alternative tourism development pathways yield distinct environmental outcomes. Drawing on Ecological Modernisation Theory and Resource Dependence Theory, the study develops the Tourism Growth Trap (TGT) framework to examine how tourism dependence conditions the environmental effects of tourism development. Specifically, the study distinguishes between tourism expansion, measured by tourist arrivals, and tourism upgrading, measured by tourism yield. Using panel data for 20 leading Asian tourism destinations from 2002 to 2023, the analysis employs Driscoll–Kraay fixed-effects estimation, with Augmented Mean Group (AMG) and Dynamic Common Correlated Effects (DCCE) estimators for robustness checks. The findings reveal that tourism dependence amplifies the environmental costs of visitor-volume growth. However, it strengthens the emission-reduction effects of tourism upgrading. Marginal-effects analysis further identifies a threshold beyond which tourism expansion becomes environmentally harmful. The findings suggest that destinations generating greater value from existing tourism activity are better positioned to balance tourism growth with environmental sustainability. The study highlights value-based tourism development as a pathway for achieving sustainable tourism transitions.