The effect of tourism development on the ecological footprint in Singapore: evidence from asymmetric ARDL method

Abstract

A trade-off may exist between tourism development and ecological footprint in Singapore since this country has been listed as the top-visited country while also the highest ecological deficit region. This study aims to probe the asymmetric effect of tourism development on the ecological footprint in Singapore from 1978 to 2016. By applying the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag approach, the outcomes obtained revealed that only positive changes in tourism development significantly and negatively influence the ecological footprint in the long term, while the short-run impact is symmetric. In addition, the empirical results showed that an increase in economic growth leads to a development in the ecological footprint, and the influence of energy consumption is not evident. The findings of this study may provide some implications for Singaporean policy-makers to promote tourism development and sustainable economic growth.