The dynamic interaction between combustible renewables and waste consumption and international tourism: the case of Tunisia

This paper employs the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds methodological approach to investigate the relationship between economic growth, combustible renewables and waste consumption, carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, and international tourism for the case of Tunisia spanning the period 1990–2010. The results from the Fisher statistic of both the Wald test and the Johansen test confirm the presence of a long-run relationship among the variables under investigation. The stability of estimated parameters has been tested, while Granger causality tests recommend a short-run unidirectional causality running from economic growth and combustible renewables and waste consumption to CO₂ emissions, a bidirectional causality between economic growth and combustible renewables and waste consumption and unidirectional causality running from economic growth and combustible renewables and waste consumption to international tourism. In the long-run, the error correction terms confirm the presence of bidirectional causality relationships between economic growth, CO₂ emissions, combustible renewables and waste consumption, and international tourism. Our long-run estimates show that combustible renewables and waste consumption increases international tourism, and both renewables and waste consumption and international tourism increase CO₂ emissions and output. We recommend that (i) Tunisia should use more combustible renewables and waste energy as this eliminates wastes from touristic zones and increases the number of tourist arrivals, leading to economic growth, and (ii) a fraction of this economic growth generated by the increase in combustible renewables and waste consumption should be invested in clean renewable energy production (i.e., solar, wind, geothermal) and energy efficiency projects.