Unraveling the Nexuses of Tourism, Terrorism, and Well-Being: Evidence from Pakistan

This study attempts to highlight the role of tourism and terrorism in shaping well-being measures and, to address the mechanism of how tourism and well-being measures can lead to terrorism in developing economies. Thus, it examines the causal relationship between well-being measures (overall well-being, social well-being, health well-being, and material well-being), tourism, terrorism, and inequality by focusing on Pakistan as a case study. We applied several time series techniques and procedures that include the bounds test, autoregressive distributed lag model mechanism, and Granger causality to analyze the relationships between the aforementioned variables. The findings suggest significant positive relationships between tourism and well-being measures. However, terrorism has a significant negative effect on well-being measures. Inequalities in the distributions of income and facilities have substantial negative effects on well-being measures and tourism; besides, it shows a significant positive association with terrorism. This study indicates that through effective tourism planning, policy makers can improve well-being measures, hence, leading to a reduction in terrorism. However, along with progress in well-being dimensions, policies, and long-term planning should be developed to ensure the equal distribution of income and facilities.