The impact of economic and environmental factors and tourism policies on the sustainability of tourism growth in China: evidence using novel NARDL model

Recently, sustainability of tourism growth has become an international issue due to environmental and economic uncertainty that needs recent researchers’ focus and also requires the policymakers’ attention. Therefore, the present research has examined the role of economic and environmental factors and tourism policy related to tourist arrival on the sustainability of tourism growth in China. The economic factor includes the gross domestic product (GDP), national income, and foreign direct investment (FDI), while environmental factors include carbon dioxide (CO(2)) emission, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission, and nitrous oxide emission. The study has extracted the data from World Development Indicators (WDI) from 1990 to 2020. The present research has employed nonlinear autoregressive distributed lagged (NARDL) to check the linkage among variables. The current study also examines the unit root using Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and Phillips-Perron (PP) tests. The results revealed that GDP, national income, tourism policy related to tourist arrival, and FDI have a positive linkage with the sustainability of tourism growth. The results also exposed that environmental factors such as CO(2) emission, GHG emission, and nitrous oxide emission have a negative linkage with the sustainability of tourism growth. This study provides the guidelines to the relevant authorities and regulators in developing and implementing the regulators regarding the sustainability of tourism growth by promoting economic and environmental conditions and effective tourism policies in the country.