Tourism Impact on Air Pollution in Developed and Developing Countries

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate and compare the impact of tourism on air pollution in selected developed and developing countries during the period of 1995-2014. To this end, at first, the model was designed based on the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) assumptions and with the presence of the major influencing factors on air pollution along with the international tourism variable. Then, the long-run relationship between these variables was estimated by the Continuously-updated and Fully-Modified (CUP-FM) method, considering the existence of a cross-sectional dependence between the model variables in both groups of studied countries. The results of this study indicate the positive impact of international tourism on air pollution in selected developing countries; while the expansion of international tourism reduces air pollution in studied developed countries.