Tourism-energy-economy-environment nexus toward sustainable and green development in Malaysia

This study investigated the impact of tourism on Malaysia's energy consumption, economic development, and environmental sustainability. The study employed a time series analysis from 1995 to 2020 using Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) to assess both short- and long-term dynamics. The estimation suggests that a 1 % increase in tourist arrivals, tourism expenditures, and tourism receipts would result in energy consumption increasing by 0.46 %, 0.47 %, and 0.64 % in the long term, and by 0.30 %, 0.31 %, and 0.51 % in the short term, respectively. Additionally, a 1 % rise in tourist arrivals, tourism expenditures, and tourism receipts would lead to a long-term increase in economic growth of 0.45 %, 0.47 %, and 0.54 %, respectively. In the short term, these increases would be 0.26 %, 0.32 %, and 0.40 %. Furthermore, a 1 % rise in tourist arrivals and tourism expenditures would result in a long-term increase of 0.32 % and 0.26 % in carbon emissions, and a short-term increase of 0.39 % and 0.29 %, respectively. The findings suggest that a 1 % rise in tourism receipts would lead to a reduction of 0.10 % in carbon emissions in the long term and 0.03 % in the short term. The results were validated using alternative cointegration regression methods. The study provides policy recommendations for sustainable tourism.