The role of tourism in environmental pollution: evidence from Malta

Abstract

This article searches the effects of tourism development on emission pollutants in Malta using (1) the autoregressive distributed lag approach and (2) two datasets which are annual data from 1971 to 2018 and quarterly data from 1990Q1 ti 2018Q4 as per data availability. Findings confirm that tourism, energy usage, and carbon dioxide emissions are in a long-term equilibrium relationship; carbon emissions converge rapidly towards the long-term equilibrium path through tourism and energy consumption channels. Findings also reveal that growth in tourism results in significant changes in energy consumption and, therefore, in CO2 emissions. Tourism has positive effects on carbon emissions in shorter periods. Still, these effects turn out to be harmful in the more extended periods beyond the peak point of carbon emissions which correspond to 1,063,213 million tourists. Therefore, this study strongly confirms the existence of an inverted U-shaped Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis for Malta.