The impact of tourism, renewable energy, and economic growth on ecological footprint and natural resources: A panel data analysis

Global warming and the conservation of resources is a challenge for policymakers to achieve sustainable development. This study develops a new global tourism index, based on standard index-making procedures (indicators selection, winsorization, normalization, aggregation). It explores the impact of the global tourism index, renewable energy, gross domestic product, trade openness, urbanization, and cultural globalization on total ecological footprints and net resource depletion in 47 high-income countries, 33 upper-middle-income countries, 35 lower-middle-income countries, and 13 low-income countries from 1995 to 2019. The environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis has been validated in high-income (turning point: 41.010), lower-middle-income (turning point: 38.919), and low-income (turning point: 31.553) countries. The regression analysis confirmed a reduction in ecological footprint due to an increase in renewable energy use (all panels), urbanization (upper middle and low-income countries), and cultural globalization (lower-middle and low-income countries). The increase in ecological footprints was reported due to an increase in the gross domestic product (all panels), trade (high and low-income countries), and urbanization (high-income countries). The reduction in resource depletion was occurred due to an increase in tourism (high, upper-middle, and lower-middle-income countries), renewable energy (all panels), urbanization (upper middle and low-income countries), and cultural globalization (all panels). It is recommended to expand tourism activities and renewable energy. It is suggested to educate people about sustainable utilization of natural resources.