On the role of environmental sustainability in the transformation of tourism growth into economic development

Abstract

Though at a first sight the potential of tourism was advocated, without any doubt, as an routine tool for improving the welfare of the population, in recent years several works have appeared that criticize the universal validity of tourism as a development tool, whose premise is that the relationship is not automatic between the two dimensions, but instead a country must meet certain characteristics in order for this link to occur and, therefore, calls into question the solution implemented by many countries and institutions to improve the level of economic development. Among these characteristics, the environmental dimension of sustainability plays a decisive role in the conditions of the population and, therefore, is key in the relationship between tourism and economic development Thus, the aim of this paper is to identify, through a country-level empirical analysis, which specific factors, related to the environmental dimension of sustainability that promote or hinder the transformation of tourism growth into an improvement of the economic development.