The Role of Technology in the Tourism and Urban Risk Nexus in South Africa

This study investigated the role of technology in the tourism and urban risk nexus in South Africa. The autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) was used as a method of analysis whilst data on technology (the number of people with mobile cellular telephone subscriptions with access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) technology), tourism, exchange rate, foreign direct investment, economic growth, terms of trade, inflation rate, and urban risk (the monetary value of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission (damage) due to urbanisation) were extracted from the World Bank’s database on global development indicators. The study found that the interactive role of technology with tourism did not reduce urban risk in South Africa, rather it had a positive impact and negligibly promoted urban risk in the country. The study further revealed that the exchange rate, terms of trade, and economic growth positively and significantly promoted urban risk in South Africa due to urbanisation. Frameworks should be put in place to ameliorate the problems of urban risk in South Africa and to adopt a suitable technological innovation that will assist the process. Rather than reduce urban risk, the interactive role of technology with tourism promoted urban risk in South Africa.