Significance of Air Transport to Tourism-Induced Growth Hypothesis in E7 Economies: Exploring the Implications for Environmental Quality

The study seeks to examine the significance of the tourism-induced growth hypothesis from the perspective of air transportation among seven emerging (E7) countries, including China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Indonesia, and Turkey. The combined impact of energy consumption and globalization was also factored into the analysis in order to draw cogent implications for environmental quality as energy demand in E7 economies continues to rise amidst growing urbanization in recent times. The study leverages on secondgenerational panel data estimators, namely cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag, augmented Mean Group, and Dumitrescu-Hurlin Causality techniques. Having established a long-run equilibrium relationship among the outlined variables, the result validates the pertinent role of air transport in enhancing economic growth as a percent rise in airline passengers' arrivals significantly enhances growth in the E7 economies by 0.77%. In addition, the feedback causality between the variables also strengthens the pivotal roles of air transport in economic growth, thereby giving credence to the tourism-led growth hypothesis (TLGH) in the E7. However, there are detrimental environmental implications for the E7 when considering the causal nexus between economic growth and the dynamics of carbon-inducing energy consumption among the countries. Hence, investments in clean energy and transport infrastructures are recommended to ensure a sustainable environment where the tourism industry can flourish.