ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Evaluating Ecological Footprints through Inbound
Tourism, Population Density, and Global Trade
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1
School of Public Administration, Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology, Xi’an, China
2
Higher Education Department Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Government College of Management Sciences,
Abbottabad, Pakistan
3
Department of Management, College of Business Administration, King Saud University,
P.O. Box 71115, Riyadh, 11587, Saudi Arabia
4
Department of Economics, University of Haripur, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Haripur, Pakistan
5
Department of Management, Aleppo University, Aleppo, Syria
Submission date: 2020-03-07
Final revision date: 2020-05-11
Acceptance date: 2020-05-14
Online publication date: 2020-09-08
Publication date: 2020-11-10
Corresponding author
Khalid Zaman
University of Wah, Department of Economics, 22060, Wah, Pakistan
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2021;30(1):555-560
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ABSTRACT
Environmental damages are largely visible by the man-made actions in general, including an
enormous increase in international tourism, huge pressure on arable land by increasing population
density, and global international trade. These stated factors are mainly responsible for ‘ecological
footprints’ across the globe. The present study considered these factors in order to evaluate ‘ecological
footprints’ in a panel of 130 countries for a period of 1995-2018. The dynamic differenced GMM
estimator is used for empirical illustrations. The study used different regression estimators in order to get
robust inferences and found that inbound tourism is the main detrimental factor of global environment
that causes ‘ecological footprint’, which further exhibit the ‘inverted U-shaped’ relationship between
them. Further, population density and countries economic growth first increases and later decreases
ecological footprints to support ‘inverted U-shaped relationship between them. The Granger causality
results unable to verify the ‘tourism –led growth’ or ‘growth –led tourism’ hypothesis, while it
shows ‘no causal’ relationship between them, although highly correlated in the regression estimates.
Ecological footprint and population density both Granger cause inbound tourism, while the bidirectional
relationship found between trade and inbound tourism. Sustainable tourism policies are highly needed
to limit ecological footprints across countries.