ARE THE BALKAN COUNTRIES CONVERGING IN TERMS OF TOURISM AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES?

Although countries have their own interests and difficulties, it is important to develop common policies in the Balkan countries to promote environmental protection activities and sustainable tourism. The development of sustainable tourism policies has accelerated due to the fact that a significant number of Balkan countries have become members of the European Union and have complied with environmental legislation. In this study, carbon emissions, tourist arrivals, energy consumption, and urbanization levels in the Balkan countries are analyzed by the convergence model. As a result of the analyses, although there is no convergence in all variables across the Balkan countries, it has been observed that there is a conditional convergence within the groups that the countries form among themselves in terms of carbon emissions, number of tourists, electricity consumption and urbanization levels. These results of the convergence model show that the Balkan countries are converging in sub-clusters, but this convergence is not the case across the Balkan countries. Thus, it is revealed that the Balkan countries need to establish common environmental and sustainable tourism policies. As a result, the Balkan countries are converged to each other in terms of environmental policies and sustainable tourism activities, but in order to achieve success at the end of this process, it is important to ensure cooperation across the Balkan countries.