Tourism-energy-economy-environment nexus toward sustainable and green development in Malaysia
Asif Raihan, Syed Masiur Rahman, Tapan Sarker, Mohammad Ridwan, Malayaranjan Sahoo, Bablu Kumar Dhar, Md. Mustaqim Roshid, Samanta Islam, Grzegorz Zimon, A. Bari
Abstract
This study investigated the impact of tourism on Malaysia's energy consumption, economic development, and environmental sustainability. The study employed a time series analysis from 1995 to 2020 using Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) to assess both short- and long-term dynamics. The estimation suggests that a 1 % increase in tourist arrivals, tourism expenditures, and tourism receipts would result in energy consumption increasing by 0.46 %, 0.47 %, and 0.64 % in the long term, and by 0.30 %, 0.31 %, and 0.51 % in the short term, respectively. Additionally, a 1 % rise in tourist arrivals, tourism expenditures, and tourism receipts would lead to a long-term increase in economic growth of 0.45 %, 0.47 %, and 0.54 %, respectively. In the short term, these increases would be 0.26 %, 0.32 %, and 0.40 %. Furthermore, a 1 % rise in tourist arrivals and tourism expenditures would result in a long-term increase of 0.32 % and 0.26 % in carbon emissions, and a short-term increase of 0.39 % and 0.29 %, respectively. The findings suggest that a 1 % rise in tourism receipts would lead to a reduction of 0.10 % in carbon emissions in the long term and 0.03 % in the short term. The results were validated using alternative cointegration regression methods. The study provides policy recommendations for sustainable tourism.