The role of tourism development in improving environmental quality in South Africa: Insights from novel dynamic ARDL simulations approach

Abstract

One approach to tackling environmental problems and achieving environmental sustainability goals is to boost the tourism industry, but  this paradigm is also contested. Using the recently developed novel dynamic autoregressive distributed lag (DARDL) simulations  framework, this study evaluates the influence of tourism development in promoting environmental quality in South Africa from 1960 to  2020. The results demonstrate that: (i) the growth of the tourism industry reduces CO₂ emissions over the short and long terms; (ii) the  scale effect worsens ecological environment while the technique effect is ecologically friendly, supporting the environmental Kuznets  curve (EKC) theory; (iii) trade openness strengthens ecological integrity in the short term but considerably intensifies environmental  degradation over the long term; (iv) industrial production, foreign direct investment, economic complexity, and energy use increase CO₂  emissions while composition effect reduces it; (v) tourism development, industrial growth, trade openness, foreign direct investment,  energy use, economic complexity index, composition effect, technique effect and scale effect Granger-cause CO₂ emissions in the short,  long and medium term. These findings raise important policy questions.