ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE AND TOURISM COMPETITIVENESS: A CROSS-COUNTRY PANEL DATA ANALYSIS

International tourism generates almost 10% of world GDP, but it also produces close to 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions [1]. This creates a difficult question for policymakers: can a country protect its natural environment and still keep its tourism sector competitive, or do these two goals work against each other? This paper compares three models of environmental policy in tourism — the European regulatory model, the Asian state-led cluster model, and the natural capital model used in several developing countries — and then tests their central claim with panel data from 16 countries between 2016 and 2024. Using a Fixed Effects regression, the results show that the Environmental Performance Index has a positive and significant effect on international tourism revenue, while GDP per capita remains the strongest driver of income. These findings support the argument that environmental quality is not a cost for tourism destinations but an economic asset. The paper ends with a short discussion of what this means for developing tourism economies that are still deciding how strict their environmental rules should be.