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Regime-dependent effect of tourism on carbon emissions in the Mediterranean countries

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Abstract

This study aims to test the effects of the number of tourist arrivals and tourism receipts on carbon emissions for the Mediterranean countries. The study investigates 15 Mediterranean countries including Albania, Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Lebanon, Morocco, Spain, Tunisia, and Turkey. The sample countries are selected considering the availability of the data. The annual data covering the period between 2001 and 2017 is used for the empirical analysis. The study employs econometrics models to test the EKC (environmental Kuznets curve) hypothesis. The results show that tourist arrival and tourism receipts reduce carbon emissions. However, this effect differs for equations taking per capita income as regime variables into account. Thus, tourist arrivals increase carbon emission up to a certain threshold within the scope of EKC hypothesis; it decreases carbon emission above this level. On the other hand, the effects of tourism receipts on carbon emissions are statistically insignificant in the first regime and reduce carbon emissions in the second regime.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.

Notes

  1. As an example of the first-generation tests, the studies of Levin et al. 2002), Harris and Tzavalis (1999), Breitung and Das (2005), and Hadri (2000) (homogeneous models) and Im, Pesaran, and Shin (2003), Maddala and Wu (1999), and Choi (2001) (Fisher type-heterogeneous model) can be given. Second-generation tests that take into account the cross-sectional dependency are MADF (Taylor and Sarno 1998), SURADF (Breuer et al. 2002), Bai and Ng (2004), CADF (Pesaran 2007), and PANKPSS (Carrion-i-Silvestre and Sansó 2006).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Business Administration, Tekirdağ Namik Kemal University, 59030, Tekirdag, Turkey

    Seda Yıldırım

  2. Economics, Tekirdağ Namik Kemal University, 59030, Tekirdag, Turkey

    Durmuş Çağrı Yıldırım & Fatma Erdoğan

  3. Department of Business Administration, Yıldız Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Kenan Aydın

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  1. Seda Yıldırım
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  2. Durmuş Çağrı Yıldırım
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  3. Kenan Aydın
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  4. Fatma Erdoğan
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SY: writing (original draft preparation), visualization; DÇY: conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, supervision; KA: investigation, writing (review and editing), FE: writing and data collection.

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Correspondence to Durmuş Çağrı Yıldırım.

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Yıldırım, S., Yıldırım, D.Ç., Aydın, K. et al. Regime-dependent effect of tourism on carbon emissions in the Mediterranean countries. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 54766–54780 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14391-7

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