Tourism Development, Environmental Sustainability and Resource Use Dynamics in South Asia

This study investigates the relationship between tourism development and resource-use dynamics in South Asia, focusing on environmental pressure, infrastructure, and structural factors. Using a balanced panel dataset of eight South Asian countries over 25 years, the study applies the CS-ARDL model to address cross-sectional dependence, heterogeneity, and mixed integration properties. The findings indicate that carbon emissions are positively and significantly associated with tourism development, suggesting a “dirty growth” pattern in which tourism expansion remains linked to environmentally intensive activities. However, dynamic panel GMM analysis indicates that this positive association is not robust after controlling for endogeneity, warranting caution in its causal interpretation. Conversely, electricity access, water productivity, and trade openness exhibit negative associations with tourism development, reflecting structural inefficiencies and weak support mechanisms. Robustness checks using FMOLS and DOLS provide consistent support for the long-run effects of CO 2 emissions and electricity access, whereas the remaining variables exhibit estimator-sensitive results. Panel Granger causality analysis further identifies a unidirectional predictive relationship from tourism development to carbon emissions, highlighting feedback dynamics between tourism expansion and environmental pressure. Overall, the study highlights the limited decoupling of tourism growth from environmental and resource constraints in South Asia.