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

AbstractTourism 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 PM2.5 (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 abou t the concentrations of PM2.5 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 PM2.5, 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 PM2.5 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 PM2.5 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 con...
Source: Journal of Environmental Health Science and Engineering - Category: Environmental Health Source Type: research