The Relation between Tourism and Economic Growth: A Case of Saudi Arabia as an Emerging Tourism Destination

Abstract

This paper examines empirically the relation between tourism and economic growth in Saudi Arabia. The authors try to justify how tourism contributes to the economic growth of Saudi Arabia. There are applied descriptive statistics, unit root test, VAR model and Granger Causality test as an econometric methodology to examine the connection between tourism and economic growth in Saudi Arabia for the annual data in the period from 1990 to 2018. The main empirical results of the study find out that tourism affects positively the economic growth in Saudi Arabia. Also, there is found a positive nexus among tourism and economic growth. Furthermore, CO2 emissions and financial development impact positively the tourism sector, while trade openness predicts a negative effect on tourism. Additionally, CO2 emissions, financial development, and trade openness have a positive impact on economic growth in Saudi Arabia. Finally, the Granger causality test provides evidence of bidirectional nexus between tourism and economic growth in Saudi Arabia. This paper contributes to the current research by explaining the causal nexus among tourism and economic growth in Saudi Arabia during the period from 1990 to 2018, applying a vector autoregressive model and Granger Causality.