Is tourism really affected by logistical operations and environmental degradation? An empirical study from the perspective of Thailand

Abstract We do this research is to examine the relationship between tourism, environmental degradation, and logistics & transport-related operations in a time series data of Thailand from 2001 to 2017. The study employed the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) statistical method to study the short-term and long-term relationship between endogenous and explanatory variables. The research results indicate that logistics and transport-related operations positively correlated with inbound tourism. Because logistics and transportation provide foreign tourist easy access to tourist destinations/places, while fossil fuel and carbon emissions have negative effects on inbound tourism in the context of Thailand. On the other hand, a greater level of crime discourages international tourists to visit and strongly negatively associated with inbound tourism both in the short-run and long-run. This research concludes with the importance of the logistics and transport sector that deem it is necessary to increase international tourists' arrivals and enhance the quality of inbound tourism. In addition, governmental authorities should enforce green practices in logistical and transport-related operations, and need to increase tourist safety and security, which may mitigate harmful effects on environmental sustainability, reduces criminal activities and also will attract foreign tourists respectively.