Investigation of The Relationship Between Climate Change and Tourism Sector with Dynamic Panel Data Analysis

Abstract

Climate change is one of the serious global problems having a variety of impacts, including sea level rise, severe wind, rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns and environmental changes. Therefore, climate change has become one of the obstacles in the tourism sector due to its environmental sensitivity and its climate-dependent characteristics. The aim of the study is to examine the possible impacts of the climate change on tourism sector within the green economy approach. The study examined the relations of variables using the dynamic panel data estimation methods with the Arellano and Bover/Blundell and Bond System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM). The research covers 21 countries with the highest number of tourist arrivals in 2017 on different continents. As a result of the analysis, the share of tourism in GDP was positively correlated with the number of tourists, Human Development Index, forest areas and renewable energy use. However, it has a negative and statistically significant relationship with CO2 emission and temperature level. The results indicate that within the green economy approach of tourism sector will contribute to economic growth and sustainable development in included countries. To increase the economic impact of the tourism strengthening the tourism sector and implementing environmental policies is presented as a research proposal.