The Role of Green Technology Innovation on the Development of Sustainable Tourism: Does Renewable Energy Use Help Mitigate Environmental Pollution? A Panel Data Analysis

Abstract

Abstract The tourism industry has been long blamed as the major driver to global warming due to it being the largest industry that uses more energy, most of which comes from sources that emits carbon-dioxide. However, despite all the blames on tourism for its negative effects on the environment, less work has been done to ascertain its impact on the environment. Unlike past studies that that alludes that tourism development exacerbates the emission of carbon-dioxide hence global warming, the current research shows that in the OECD countries, tourism does not have any significant link with greenhouse gasses emissions. This is so because OECD nations have long started to shift from fossil fuel use, as sources of energy, to renewable energy use which doesn’t exacerbates greenhouse gasses emissions. However, the current research concurs with the findings of past studies that renewable energy consumption significantly decreases greenhouse gases emissions. Using renewable energy sources of energy instead of fossil fuels should continue to be encouraged in all nations for the purpose of achieving low carbon in the future. The current study uses dynamic GMM model for 38 OECD countries from 2008 to 2019. Dynamic GMM model remains one of the best models since it corrects endogeneity problem in a model. GMM model overcomes autocorrelation, heteroskedasticity and normality problems, hence the robustness and reliability of results obtained. Gross Domestic Product and population size negatively affect greenhouse gasses emissions while inflation rate is observed to have a significant strong positive link with greenhouse gasses emissions.