Cultural resources: tourism and its impact on environment

Abstract

Pakistan is rich in cultural and natural resources and these resources proved to be helpful for the promotion of the tourism sector in the country. This sector does not only contribute to the national economy but also generates thousands of job opportunities in the country. Apart from economic development, Tourism affects adversely the environment. According to the previous studies, there is a relationship between TM and the degradation of the environment. We design this study to find the linkages between Tourism (TM), CO2 emissions (CEs), GDP per capita (GDPPC) and Energy Use (EU). The annual data from 1995 to 2014 is used to examine the relationship among factors. The Fully Modified Ordinary Least Square (FMOLS) approach is used to analyse the data. The findings indicated that there is a positive relationship between TM and CEs but not significant at 5%. Moreover, the results indicate that the GDPPC and EU have a positive and significant relationship with CEs because the P-values of both variables’ coefficients are lesser than 5%. This study reveals that energy, used by the industrial sector, enhances CEs, validating that CEs registered a substantial rise because the industrial sector was using more energy rather than other sectors like tourism.