Relationship between international tourism and concentrations of PM 2.5: an ecological study based on WHO data

• Published in: Journal of environmental health science and engineering Vol. 18; no. 2; pp. 1029 - 1035
• Main Authors: Hemmati, Farhad, Dabbaghi, Fatemeh, Mahmoudi, Ghahraman
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 01.12.2020; BioMed Central Ltd
• Subjects: Air pollution; Analysis; Banks (Finance); Earth and Environmental Science; Environment; Environmental Economics; Environmental Engineering/Biotechnology; Environmental Health; Environmental Law/Policy/Ecojustice; Quality of Life Research; Research Article; Tourism; Tourism promotion; Travel industry; Waste Management/Waste Technology; China; Tourism; PM; International conflict; Societal safety; Ecological study; PM2.5
• ISSN: 2052-336X; 2052-336X
• DOI: 10.1007/s40201-020-00524-6

Tourism is regarded as a major global industry. Given the importance of identifying factors affecting the tourism industry and attracting international tourists, the present ecological study explored the impact of environmental pollution on the number of international tourists arrival using concentrations of PM 2.5 (particulate matter 2.5 μm or less in size) in a multivariate framework under the context of 190 countries. Using panel data from 190 countries, the author explored the data on the number of international tourists arriving in countries in 2017 extracted from the World Bank (WB) website, and obtained the information about the concentrations of PM 2.5 from the World Health Organization (WHO) website. Pearson’s correlation coefficient and linear regression analysis were used to examine the correlation of the number of tourists with the variables of daily concentrations of PM 2.5 , societal safety, international conflict, and the relationship of tourist arrival with the studied variables, respectively. The number of countries with low, moderate, and high concentrations of PM 2.5 in urban areas was 33, 116, and 41, respectively. This numbers for rural areas was 47, 102, and 42 countries, respectively. The mean concentrations of PM 2.5 in the surveyed countries was 23.90 ± 15.81 and 25.69 ± 16.76 for rural and urban areas, respectively. The estimation results revealed that there was a significant correlation between the number of tourists with the concentrations of PM 2.5 in the rural areas ( p  = 0.01). There was also a significant relationship between the human development index (HDI) and the concentration of PM 2.5 . A significant relationship was observed in the results of univariate linear regression analysis between tourist arrival with rural concentrations of PM 2.5 ( p  = 0.02) and societal safety ( p  = 0.003). After adjusting the effect of societal safety variables, domestic and international conflict, the relationship between tourist arrivals and concentrations of PM 2.5 in rural area remained significant ( p  = 0.02). The results imply that by reducing the concentration of PM 2.5 the positive attitude of tourists for traveling to countries with healthy air can be earned.