Tourism Nexus with Economic Growth and Factors Derives Tourism in Pakistan: Insights from ARDL

Abstract

Tourism plays a central role in the economic growth of numerous countries. It encourages foreign exchange, investment, and employment opportunities in the host country. Numerous studies have been published on factors driving the tourism industry in Pakistan. However, they left the research gap and made unexplored the effect of the crime index and military regime and technology on the tourism industry in Pakistan. Therefore, this study utilized two models, multiple and simple regressions from the period of 1996 to 2021 and 1995 to 2020, to fill gape this study employed autoregressive and distributive lags model (ARDL) and other statistical tools, such as augmented Dickey fuller test (ADF), White and autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (ARCH) tests, Serial LM test, principal components analysis (PCA). The findings of the study reveal that there is a positive and statistically significant association between tourism and economic growth in the short run as well as in the long run. In addition to this, the results of the tourism determinants model outlined that, terrorism, crime, and military regime, adversely affect tourism in Pakistan in the long run. While fixed telephone subscription (FTS) proxy for technology, hard infrastructure (HI), inflation positively determines tourism in Pakistan both in the short run and long run. Thus, this study recommends that government needs to design sustainable and effective policies to boost tourism in Pakistan.