The Impact of Corruption on Tourism Sector in Nigeria: Empirical Insights by Using an Autoregressive Distributed Lag Bounds (ARDL) Testing Approach

ABSTRACT The study investigates the impact of corruption on tourism in Nigeria. The study employs quarterly frequency data spanning from 2002Q1 to 2018Q4. In examining the short- and long-run relationships between corruption and tourism in Nigeria, the study uses the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique. The findings show that the impact of corruption on tourism is negative in both the long and short-run, while individual income and foreign direct investment, as control variables, have a direct effect on tourism in the two periods. The negative relationship between corruption and tourism lends support to the “sanding the wheels” hypothesis in both the long and short-run. The study recommends that the Nigerian government should adopt corruption-reduction strategies for reducing the negative effect of corruption on tourism in Nigeria.