Can Tourism Establish Peace? New Evidence From a Global Panel Data
International Journal of Tourism Research
Published online on August 06, 2026
Abstract
["International Journal of Tourism Research, Volume 28, Issue 4, July/August 2026. ", "\nABSTRACT\nThis study examines how tourism affects both negative (traditional) and positive (non‐traditional) peace using a global panel dataset. The analysis employs static and dynamic panel estimators to capture conditional mean effects and applies panel quantile regression to explore heterogeneity across the peace distribution. This approach allows the impact of tourism to differ across countries with low, medium, and high levels of peace rather than assuming homogeneous effects. The results show that tourism significantly promotes negative peace consistently across countries. For positive peace, conditional mean estimates suggest a beneficial effect; however, quantile regression reveals substantial cross‐country variation. Tourism does not significantly enhance positive peace in countries that already exhibit high levels of such peace, whereas its contribution is strong and statistically significant in countries with moderate and low levels of positive peace. These findings highlight the context‐dependent role of tourism in peacebuilding.\n"]