TY - JOUR
T1 - Importing to feed international tourists
T2 - Growth implications for islands across the globe
AU - Baidoo, Francis
AU - Pan, Lei
AU - Fiador, Vera Ogeh Lassey
AU - Agbloyor, Elikplimi Komla
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2023.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - The expansion of inbound tourism among global islands, amidst relatively inadequate supporting tradable goods, potentially triggers high merchandise imports, resulting in an indeterminate impact on economic growth. Employing fixed and random effects estimation techniques on five-year-non-overlapping-averaged data, covering 1980 through 2019, this study, firstly, investigates the potential bi-causal relationship between inbound tourism and merchandise imports, in the case of 45 sovereign islands. The economic growth implication of a concurrent pursuit of tourism expansion and merchandise imports is also examined. The study further investigates how over-reliance on imported merchandise to feed international tourists, and over-specialisation in the tourism sector, affect the tourism-led-growth hypothesis in the case of these islands. Results from the study show that an increase in inbound tourism significantly leads to an increase in merchandise imports, and vice versa. Also, importing merchandises to sustain inbound tourism is significantly observed not to be detrimental to economic growth. However, results further reveal that over-reliance on imported merchandises to sustain inbound tourism, as well as over-specialisation in tourism with the help of imported merchandises, both exert significant detrimental net effects on economic growth. The findings hold policy guidelines for the pursuit of tourism-led and merchandise-import-led growth strategies among global islands.
AB - The expansion of inbound tourism among global islands, amidst relatively inadequate supporting tradable goods, potentially triggers high merchandise imports, resulting in an indeterminate impact on economic growth. Employing fixed and random effects estimation techniques on five-year-non-overlapping-averaged data, covering 1980 through 2019, this study, firstly, investigates the potential bi-causal relationship between inbound tourism and merchandise imports, in the case of 45 sovereign islands. The economic growth implication of a concurrent pursuit of tourism expansion and merchandise imports is also examined. The study further investigates how over-reliance on imported merchandise to feed international tourists, and over-specialisation in the tourism sector, affect the tourism-led-growth hypothesis in the case of these islands. Results from the study show that an increase in inbound tourism significantly leads to an increase in merchandise imports, and vice versa. Also, importing merchandises to sustain inbound tourism is significantly observed not to be detrimental to economic growth. However, results further reveal that over-reliance on imported merchandises to sustain inbound tourism, as well as over-specialisation in tourism with the help of imported merchandises, both exert significant detrimental net effects on economic growth. The findings hold policy guidelines for the pursuit of tourism-led and merchandise-import-led growth strategies among global islands.
KW - economic growth
KW - fixed and random effects
KW - global islands
KW - merchandise imports
KW - tourism specialisation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85181197772&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/13548166231224012
DO - 10.1177/13548166231224012
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85181197772
SN - 1354-8166
JO - Tourism Economics
JF - Tourism Economics
ER -