Environmental and Tourism Policies for the Decarbonization of the Tourism Sector

Tourism, which has now become a huge industry, provides employment opportunities and makes a significant contribution to stimulating the economy, but it also places a heavy burden on the environment. In particular, the increase in greenhouse gas emissions from transport for tourism is a significant problem. Therefore, there is a need to promote sustainable tourism that balances tourism and the environment. However, the causal relationship between tourism, the environment, and growth is not always clear. This chapter surveys research trends in the tourism-led growth hypothesis to sustainable tourism, focusing on theoretical and empirical analyses. It first provides an overview of the empirical and theoretical analyses of tourism and growth, before explaining how these relationships change when environmental influences are taken into account. While the effect of tourism development on economic growth is generally supported empirically, the possibility of bias should be noted. Mechanisms that support the hypothesis include the externality effect of tourism promoting other industrial development. While there is no unique definition of sustainable tourism, environmental Kuznets curves, such as those relating to tourism and carbon emissions, have been found. Modeling analyses that take transport for tourism into account point to the possibility that environmental policies may reduce tourism greenhouse gas emissions but lead to a reduction in GDP and employment, and whether such policies will lead to sustainable tourism is still being debated. Finally, the state of sustainable tourism in the post-COVID era is discussed in terms of employment and inequality.