On the Nonlinear Impact of Tourism on Environment Quality in South Asia: Evidence from the NARDL Approach

Abstract

The current study inspects the nonlinear effects of tourism (TOR), energy use, and output growth on carbon emissions in the selected South Asian (SA) countries, namely Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and India. The empirical results are obtained by implementing the recently developed nonlinear autoregressive distributive lag (NARDL) technique covering the data spanning from 1990 to 2019. The empirical findings suggest the nonlinear effect of TOR on carbon emissions in the long run. Further, the results revealed that positive shocks in TOR have a positive and significant effect on carbon emissions in the SA region. In contrast, negative shocks in TOR mitigate carbon emissions in all SA economies except Nepal. Moreover, the results demonstrate that energy use and output growth also have a meaningful impact on carbon emissions. Based on the findings, the directions for future research and policy implications are proposed.