Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.1080/1331677X.2021.1985577
Investigating the nexus between CO2 emissions, economic growth, energy consumption and pilgrimage tourism in Saudi Arabia
Ilhan Ozturk
orcid.org/0000-0002-6521-0901
Alper Aslan
Buket Altinoz
Abstract
Every year millions of Muslims go to Saudi Arabia to fulfil pilgrimage worship, thus Saudi Arabia is such a religious centre brings
with it various consequences. In this context, this paper investigates the nexus between CO2 emissions, economic growth,
energy consumption and pilgrimage tourism in Saudi Arabia for
the period of 1968–2017. The dynamic ordinary least squares
(DOLS) and fully-modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) methods are employed in this study. FMOLS results prove that energy
consumption, number of pilgrims and oil prices have a positive
effect on CO2 emissions and GDP has a negative effect on it,
while DOLS results imply that only energy consumption has a
positive effect on carbon emissions. In addition, there is unidirectional causality from CO2 to pilgrimage tourism and from pilgrimage tourism to oil, and there is bidirectional causality between
pilgrimage tourism and GDP. Therefore, the environmental cost of
pilgrimage tourism is inevitable. Reflections of pilgrimage visits to
Saudi Arabia as a belief tourism are dealt with for the first time in
this paper. In addition, our more specific purpose is to determine
the environmental impacts of Muslims performing the pilgrimage,
during their religious worship.
Keywords
CO2; pilgrimage tourism; energy consumption; Saudi Arabia
Hrčak ID:
302498
URI
Publication date:
31.3.2023.
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