The effect of freedom on international tourism demand: Empirical evidence from the top eight most visited countries

Abstract

The present study investigates the impact of freedom (i.e. the effects of political rights and civil liberties) on tourist arrivals for the eight countries with the highest tourist arrivals in 2016 (France, the United States, Spain, China, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Mexico), using annual data from 1998 to 2016, through advanced panel data methods. Notably, the key strengths of this study are as follows: (i) it examines the impact of institutional quality on international tourism demand for the most visited countries and (ii) it employs advanced panel data techniques, which have been suggested in recent years. We first constituted a freedom index using political rights and civil liberties data. Second, we performed cross-sectional dependence (CD) tests to examine whether there existed CD in the panel data set. After detecting the presence of CD, we used panel unit root and cointegration tests, which are robust to CD to avoid problems from spurious regression. Finally, we estimated long-run parameters of the empirical model through a panel data estimator that is capable of presenting efficient and unbiased output in the presence of CD. Our empirical findings show that the level of freedom may play a role in explaining the volume of international tourist arrivals. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed in the study, particularly with respect to the importance of rights and freedom in the context of international inbound tourist arrivals.

The relationship between institutional quality and ecological footprint: Is there a connection?

“…In other words, while EF, GDP, and T are I (1), IQ and E are I (0). Within the framework of the obtained results, using traditional panel data methods such as OLS, RE and FE may create a spurious regression problem (Bulut, Kocak, & Suess, 2020). To avoid such a problem, it is efficient to examine whether there is a cointegration relationship between these variables.…”

“…First of all, the AMG is an estimator that takes the CSD into account. Therefore, it is an estimator that provides reliable results for CSD (Bulut et al, 2020). In addition, the stationary levels of the variables are not important for the AMG estimator to be employed.…”

Comparative Analysis of Macroeconomic Variables Determining Tourism Activities in Turkey

“…Eğitim, spor, sağlık ve sosyal ve kültürel aktivitelerde bulunmak amacıyla da bireyler turizm faaliyetleri gerçekleştirmektedir. Bu durum yerli vatandaşlar ve yabancı ziyaretçiler arasında sosyal ve kültürel gelişme ile iletişim yaratmaktadır (Hepsag, 2016;Bulut, Koçak ve Suess, 2019).…”

Do institutions matter for tourism spending?

“…The literature has recently examined the role of institutional frameworks in tourism demand (e.g. see Bulut et al, 2020; Gozgor et al, 2019; Kim et al, 2018). For instance, Gozgor et al (2019) find that legal system effectiveness and property rights protection promotes international tourism arrivals, in a sample of 152 countries from 1995 to 2015.…”

“…However, most recent studies focus on the effects of institutions on tourist arrivals while domestic and outbound tourism are underexplored. Furthermore, current studies consider one or more aspects of formal institutions, such as freedom of the press (Bulut et al, 2020; Demir and Gozgor, 2019) or legal system effectiveness (Gozgor et al, 2019). There are other important components of formal institutions, such as government effectiveness, control of corruption, regulatory quality, rule of law, political stability and absence of violence (Kaufmann and Kraay, 2008) that need to be explored.…”