Contribution of international ecotourism to comprehensive economic development and convergence in the Central American and Caribbean region. Issue 33 (15th July 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Gunter, Ulrich; Ceddia, M. Graziano; Leonard, David; Tröster, Bernhard
• Is Part Of: Applied economics. Volume 50:Issue 33(2018)
• Page Start: 3614
• Page End: 3629
• Publication Date: 2018-07-15
• Subjects: International ecotourism -- sustainability indicators -- dynamic panel model -- comprehensive economic development -- comprehensive economic convergence; O11 -- O13 -- Q01 -- Z32; Economics -- Periodicals; 330
• DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2018.1430339
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0003-6846

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Drawing on the positive experience from Costa Rica, the study examines whether international ecotourism makes a significant contribution to comprehensive economic development for the Central American and Caribbean region and contributes to comprehensive economic convergence. Following a standard empirical growth model, a dynamic panel regression model is estimated using time-series data from 1995 until 2012 for a cross section of seven countries. The interaction of international tourism and various established sustainability indicators is employed allowing ecotourism to be consistently quantified across countries, while numerous country-specific structural characteristics are controlled for. The estimation results show that international ecotourism has a statistically significant positive effect on both traditional economic development (real GDP per capita) and comprehensive economic development (adjusted net savings; ANS per capita), which is a measure of a society's potential future well-being, thus providing evidence in support of the tourism-led growth hypothesis and pointing towards an important role for ecotourism in driving comprehensive economic convergence.