Tourism development and carbon emissions in sub-Saharan African countries: is there an inverted U-shaped relationship?

Abstract

In this study, we examine the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between tourism and carbon emissions in 29 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries using data from 1995 to 2019. Departing from the previous studies, we have also grouped SSA countries into low- and middleincome countries, thereby estimating three panels. We have used a wide range of panel estimation techniques to examine this linkage, including the dynamic common-correlated effects (DCCE), the Driscoll-Kraay estimators, and the fully-modified OLS (FMOLS). Our results show that the relationship between tourism and carbon emissions depends largely on the estimation technique used and the level of income of the individual countries. Overall, we can conclude that there is primafacie evidence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between tourism and carbon emissions in middle-income countries and all SSA countries combined, but not in low-income countries. This means that the perceived adverse effects of tourism expansion on environmental pollution may only be experienced in the early stages of tourism development and that as the tourism sector develops, tourism is likely to promote energy conservation through sustainable tourism or green tourism, thereby leading to a reduction in carbon emissions. Policy implications are discussed.

Keywords

• Tourism
• carbon emissions
• U-shaped curve
• sub-Saharan African countries