Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-2025

Department

College of Business

Abstract

Ecological sustainability, energy consumption, tourism, and economic growth interact in complex ways, a pressing concern for modern policy and study. Using data from 1999 to 2023, this study looks at the top 10 tourist destinations to see how these variables relate to their environmental impact. The primary regression analysis employs the Driscoll-Kraay Standard Errors (DKSE) approach, while Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS) and Panel-Corrected Standard Errors (PCSE) are used for robustness checks. The DKSE results show that a 1 % increase in economic development reduces the ecological footprint by 0.775 %. Similarly, renewable energy minimizes the EFP by 0.140 %, and trade openness shows the most substantial effect, reducing it by 1.503 %. On the contrary, tourism and gross fixed capital formation raise EFP by 0.003 % and 0.905 %, respectively. All results are statistically significant at the 1 % level and verified by FGLS and PCSE robustness checks. The findings highlight the importance of sustainable trade policy, energy-efficient technology adoption, and sustainable tourist practices to reduce negative environmental consequences without sacrificing economic development.

Publisher's Statement

© 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Publisher’s version of record: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.igd.2025.100249

Publication Title

Innovation and Green Development

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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