Climate Crossroads: Exploring the Environmental Impact of Tourism and Urbanization on Ecological Footprints in Asia-Pacific

Abstract

Since the mid-20th century, Environmental Degradation (ED) has been a paramount concern for humanity. Numerous researchers have found an association between various human activities and ED indicators. This paper aims to analyze the impact of tourism, urbanization, and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on the Ecological Footprint (EF) and CO2 emissions in nine Asia-Pacific countries over 22 years. The theoretical foundations of this study are based on externality theory and public/common good theories that explain the cost of ED by certain human activities. Distributed Lag (NARDL), and the Johansen co-integration techniques to see whether long-run causality exists between tourism, urbanization, FDI inflows, and the ED indicators. The findings reveal a long-run causality between tourism, urbanization, EF, and CO2 territorial emissions in Asia-Pacific countries. The empirical outcomes also show a significant impact of tourism activities and urbanization on EF and CO2 emissions. Moreover, a moderately significant long-run causality exists in the sample countries except for Japan. These findings suggest that governments and lawmakers should be concerned about the environmental consequences of tourism and urbanization-related activities and enact policy measures to preserve their ecosystems.