Relationship between international tourism and concentrations of PM _2.5: an ecological study based on WHO data

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 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.