Abstract
One approach to tackling environmental problems and achieving environmental sustainability goals is
to boost the tourism industry, but this paradigm is also contested. Using the recently developed novel
dynamic autoregressive distributed lag (DARDL) simulations framework, this study evaluates the influence
of tourism development in promoting environmental quality in South Africa from 1960 to 2020. The
results demonstrate that: (i) the growth of the tourism industry reduces CO2 emissions over the short and
long terms; (ii) the scale effect worsens ecological environment while the technique effect is ecologically
friendly, supporting the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) theory; (iii) trade openness strengthens
ecological integrity in the short term but considerably intensifies environmental degradation over the
long term; (iv) industrial production, foreign direct investment, economic complexity, and energy use
increase CO2 emissions while composition effect reduces it; (v) tourism development, industrial growth,
trade openness, foreign direct investment, energy use, economic complexity index, composition effect,
technique effect and scale effect Granger-cause CO2 emissions in the short, long and medium term. These
findings raise important policy questions