Sustainability 14 12156

sustainability
Article
Examining the Relationship between Tourism and Gender
Equality: Evidence from Asia
Yan Zhang 1 , Shenglan Xu 2, * and Jiekuan Zhang 3
1 School of Tourism Management, Guilin Tourism University, Guilin 541006, China

2 College of Tourism and Urban-Rural Planning, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu 610000, China
3 Asean Tourism Research Centre of China Tourism Academy, Guilin Tourism University, Guilin 541006, China
* Correspondence: xushenglan2022@126.com
Abstract: This study analyzes the relationship between tourism and gender equality using panel
vector autoregression and vector error correction models estimated by the generalized method of
moment. This methodology is based on panel data from 36 Asian countries between 2006 and 2019.
The other three variables including the economy, employment, and education are also analyzed. The
results show that there is a long-run equilibrium relationship between tourism and gender equality.
In the short run, tourism is not the Granger cause for gender equality; however, tourism significantly
contributes to gender equality in all regions in the long run. Furthermore, a heterogeneous causality
between tourism and gender equality is found across the regions. Tourism’s positive effect on gender
equality does not depend entirely on economic empowerment. All the economy, education and
employment mostly contribute to realizing gender equality, but this contribution is not decisive. The
findings and policy implications are finally discussed.
Keywords: tourism; gender equality; Asian countries; panel vector autoregression (PVAR); system
generalized method of moment
Citation: Zhang, Y.; Xu, S.; Zhang, J.

Examining the Relationship between
1. Introduction
Tourism and Gender Equality:
Evidence from Asia. Sustainability Gender equality is one of the key evaluation indicators of global and regional sus-
2022, 14, 12156. https://doi.org/ tainable development [1]. As an important global economic sector, tourism’s association
10.3390/su141912156 with gender issues has always been a focus of the scientific community [2–4]. The evidence
of the positive impact of tourism on gender equality has been provided in numerous
Academic Editor: Colin Michael Hall
micro cases [5–9]. These studies focus on the impact of tourism on the empowerment of
Received: 27 August 2022 women’s economy, employment, and education. The results show that tourism plays an
Accepted: 22 September 2022 important role in promoting women’s status and thus narrows the gender gap. It was also
Published: 26 September 2022 reported that, relative to the broader economy, tourism employs more women (54% versus
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral
39%); women in tourism earn 14.7% less than men, and this figure is 16.8% in the general
with regard to jurisdictional claims in
economy; and 23.7% of tourism ministers are women, but only 20.7% of the general gov-
published maps and institutional affil- ernment ones (World Bank Open Data, available at: https://data.worldbank.org (accessed
iations. on 21 September 2019)). Therefore, the role of tourism in promoting gender equality has
again captured more academic attention since the United Nations included gender equality
in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 [10]. However, we note that these
studies basically rely on sociological methodologies. This dominant paradigm of sociology
Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. makes it difficult to quantify the effect of tourism on gender equality.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. The fieldwork methods from the sociological perspective dominate this subfield. Few
This article is an open access article macro studies have been conducted at the national or international level. In addition,
distributed under the terms and case studies are often difficult to replicate in other regions, which makes it difficult to
conditions of the Creative Commons identify common features of the nexus of tourism and gender equality. Notably, the effect
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
of tourism on gender equality is not always positive. As argued by Lenao and Basupi and
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
Nguyen, the marginalization of women is equally noteworthy in tourism [7,11]. Therefore,
4.0/).
Sustainability 2022, 14, 12156. https://doi.org/10.3390/su141912156 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability

Sustainability 2022, 14, 12156 2 of 18
we need a new tool for quantifying the relationship between tourism and gender equality.
However, current sociological methods seem impossible to tell us the answer to this
quantification. Given this background, we adopt a novel econometric method to investigate
the relationship between tourism and gender equality. Moreover, given the significant
effect of the economy, employment, and education on gender equality (see Section 2),
we simultaneously concern these three variables. Consequently, this study explores the
relationship among tourism, economy, employment, education, and gender equality.
In contrary to prior empirical studies, our article contributes to the literature in three
ways. First and foremost, we do our research from an economic perspective rather than a
traditional sociological one. The fixed sociological characteristics have made this classic
and important tourism field less innovative [1,2]. We expect the new perspective to lead to
new findings and inspire more novel research. Second, our data is derived from official
statistics or reports rather than from the traditional primary survey. This study depends on
the panel data of five variables: tourism, economy, education, employment, and gender
equality. The advantage of doing so is that our research framework can be replicated, thus
free from the subjectivity and uncertainty of case studies. In addition, macro research based
on panel data helps find common conclusions in different regions.
Third, methodologically, we employ the panel vector autoregression (PVAR) approach
to explain the impact of tourism shock on gender equality. Since Sims introduced the
VAR model into economic analysis [12], the VAR model has been one of the most popular
methods for analyzing multiple related variables. Generally speaking, if there are fewer
economic variables in the VAR model, satisfactory parameters can be obtained through the
ordinary least square (OLS) or maximum likelihood estimation method. However, if there
are more variables (such as the five variables involved in our study), the panel fixed effect
will make the results from the VAR model inconsistent and bias due to more parameter
estimation. In this context, we build an advanced augmented PVAR model to improve
the model’s robustness. Concretely, we employ Arellano–Bond’s generalized method of
moment (GMM) estimator to estimate the PVAR model. The GMM estimation method
defines the criterion function as the correlation function of the instrumental variable and
disturbance term and minimizes it to obtain a robust parameter estimation [13].
We organize this paper as follows. Section 2 presents a literature review. In Section 3,
we introduce the methodology and data collection. Section 4 reports the empirical results,
including cointegration tests, impulse response functions, and short and long-run Granger
causality tests. Section 5 discusses the results and underlines the policy implications. The
final section concludes.
2. Literature Review
The 20th century saw profound changes in traditional notions of gender. In the new
century, gender equality in particular has become a global trend and is even considered
politically correct in most major countries around the world [14]. Moreover, gender equality
is listed among both the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and SDGs. Nevertheless,
deep-rooted patriarchal culture and different levels of social and economic development
make gender equality vary greatly in different regions [15,16]. There are still some key
factors significantly affecting the realization of gender equality, including work, income
and rights [17], education, employment, and political participation [18], income [19,20],
education [21], and various material and social resources, such as income, rights, and
employment [22]. Likewise, The Global Gender Gap Report 2006 introduced by the World
Economic Forum summarized these factors as economic participation and opportunity, educa-
tional attainment, health and survival and political empowerment [23]. Therefore, the economy,
education, employment, and political rights could largely explain the gender gap.
Once the idea of sustainable development was put forward, it was closely related
to tourism. Nowadays, that tourism should and could contribute to global and regional
sustainable development is a fundamental consensus. Consequently, tourism is duty-bound
to promote gender equality. Conversely, without gender equality, there is no sustainable
tourism as well [24,25]. Therefore, as mentioned above, extensive published literature

focusing on tourism and gender equality has constituted a hot spot in sociology. Wilkinson
and Pratiwi early indicated that increased income is the biggest change for women in
rural tourism development [26]. Afterward, economic empowerment has always been the
major concern of scholars in the field of tourism and gender equality [8,24,27,28]. Along
with women’s economic empowerment, much attention has been paid to the increase
in women’s employment opportunities since the increase in women’s tourism income is
usually achieved through employment. Nyaruwata and Nyaruwata and Uduji et al. argued
that tourism is the main industry for women’s employment [9,29]. Similarly, Gentry and
Rinaldi and Salerno concluded that tourism is an important contributor to helping women
create new jobs [30,31]. This is also well reflected in the Global Report on Women in Tourism
that finds that women account for the majority of tourism employment worldwide and
tourism provides a smaller gender pay gap than the broader economy [32] (pp. 8–9).
Few studies have focused on education and gender equality in tourism. However,
education for women is vital for their empowerment and requires sustaining institutional
and budgetary support [21]. On the one hand, UNWTO indicated that a lack of education
or formal training could jeopardize women’s active participation in tourism [32] (pp. 13).
On the other hand, tourism needs more female employees with high service skills and
knowledge levels. Therefore, more opportunities for education in tourism are provided for
women and make them more independent [33]. Furthermore, a large number of female
senior managers and even leaders exist in tourism [34,35].
It is thus rationally concluded that to a large extent, tourism promotes gender equality
through empowering women’s economy, education, and employment. We also notice that
The Global Gender Gap Report 2006 pointed out the importance of political participation in
gender equality [23]. This, however, has not captured enough attention in tourism studies.
It may be difficult to explore women’s political empowerment from the perspective of
tourism. Nevertheless, the proportion of female officials in tourism administrations is
higher than that in the whole government [32] (pp. 65–66), which partly shows that tourism
can realize the political empowerment of women as well.
Although previous studies have shown that tourism promotes gender equality, the
obstacles to this process are still diverse and gender discrimination is still widespread [36].
For example, Harvey et al. early found the inequality between the benefits of women and
men [37]. Oliver and Sard found that gender discrimination may be the main reason for
the gender wage gap in the hospitality sector [38]. Alrwajfah et al. indicated that obstacles
still exist in women’s employment in the Jordanian tourism sector, leading them to be less
optimistic about the development of the tourism economy [39]. Similarly, in Islamic society,
conservative social traditions and customs significantly affect women’s current and future
employment in tourism [40,41]. This reveals that traditional gender culture weakens the
positive effect of tourism on women’s economy, employment, and education, which is also
substantiated [42]. Moreover, gender discrimination against women persists even among
top-level managers [4,34].
To sum up, gender equality seems to be an important outcome of tourism. In the
development of tourism, the rise of women’s status has been widely acknowledged. How-
ever, sexism still exists significantly in tourism. It should be noted that these conclusions
are mainly based on micro case studies. However, prior studies have failed to investigate
the nexus of tourism and gender equality from large macro-scales such as national and
even international. The primary reason for this gap is that previous studies on tourism and
gender equality have been fixed in the paradigm of sociology [2,3]. The fieldwork approach
dominates this subfield and is challenging to use in macro research at the national or
international level. Additionally, case studies are difficult to replicate in other regions, thus
making it difficult to find common problems of tourism and gender equality. Given this
background, some scholars quantified the influence of tourism on gender equality [1,11]
and explored the configuration of tourism’s influence on the gender gap [43] at the na-
tional level, thus expanding the research scope of such an important field of tourism and
gender. However, the dynamic relationship between tourism and gender equality and
related variables remains unknown. Therefore, unlike prior research, we attempt to explore
the equilibrium and causal relationship between tourism and gender equality at also the
national level by applying economic techniques.
As was mentioned in the introduction, the research method is the GMM-PVAR model,
in which tourism and gender equality are regarded as two economic variables. We simulta-
neously introduce the economy, education, and employment into the GMM-PVAR model
based on the above literature review. However, we do not take into account political rights
and cultural variables due to limited data availability.
3. Methods and Materials

3.1. GMM-PVAR Model
As a result of the lags of the dependent variables in the classic PVAR model, the
fixed effects correlate with the independent variables. Therefore, using the standard
mean-differencing operation to remove the fixed effects may cause the deviation and
inconsistency of the estimated coefficients. In order to obtain consistent and valid estimates
in this case, we apply the forward mean-differencing and keep the orthogonality between
lagged independent variables and transformed variables. Consequently, we employ the
system GMM method to estimate these coefficients [44]. The system GMM is an extension
of the earlier difference GMM [45] and uses the lags of both the variables and the difference
variable as the instrumental variables, which can effectively avoid the shortcomings of
the weak instrumental variables in difference GMM. In this study, the PVAR and panel
vector error correction (PVEC) models are estimated by performing a robust system GMM
technique according to Ouyang and Li and Zhang and Zhang [46,47].
3.2. Empirical Region and Data Collection

Our empirical area is Asia, where there are world-famous tourist destinations such as
Thailand and the Maldives, developed countries such as Japan and Israel, developing coun-
tries such as China and India, some super-high oil-rich countries such as Qatar and Saudi
Arabia, and the Philippines, with its high gender equality index, and Yemen and Jordan,
which rank last in the world. Asia shows remarkable diversity in tourism, economy, and
gender equality. Therefore, studying Asia is very representative globally, which not only
helps to understand the relationship between tourism, economy, education, employment,
and gender equality within Asia but also has a very high reference value for other regions.
Referring to the existing research, the proxies for tourism and economy are inter-
national inbound tourists [48,49] and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita [50,51],
respectively. Education is represented by the government expenditure on education and
measured as the percentage of government expenditure. Considering that tourism-related
industries are mainly services, employment is measured as the percentage of female em-
ployment in services. Since no measurement of gender equality can be found in the
published tourism literature, we use the gender gap index to represent gender equality in
this study, which is reported by The Global Gender Gap Report published annually by the
World Economic Forum that quantifies the gender gap index for each country.
All the data on tourism, economy, education, and employment are collected from the
World Bank open data (http://data.worldbank.org/, accessed on 10 March 2022). The data
on gender equality are derived from The Global Gender Gap Report. Since the first Report
was published in 2006, considering the balance of the panel data, all data are from 2006. It
is noteworthy that since some data are missing seriously, Laos, East Timor, North Korea,
Bhutan, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, The United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and
Uzbekistan are excluded from our study. Finally, we collect 36 Asian countries’ panel
data on tourism, economy, education, employment, and gender equality over the period
2006–2019. Using data from 2020 and beyond may distort the link between tourism and
gender equality due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; therefore, we have data up to
2019. Based on these data, we examine the relationship among these five analyzed variables.
To further explore the heterogeneity of different regional relationships, we divide Asia into
three regions [1]: East and Southeast Asia, including 12 countries (Brunei, Cambodia, China,
Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam);
South Asia, including 6 countries (Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka);
and West and Central Asia, including 18 countries (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Bahrain, Cyprus,
Georgia, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar,
Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Yemen).
Table 1 reports the descriptive statistics for the whole of Asia. From 2006 to 2019,
Qatar had the highest GDP per capita in 2012, while Nepal had the smallest in 2006; China
had the largest number of inbound arrivals in 2019, while Bangladesh had the smallest
in 2015; Jordan had the biggest proportion of education expenditure in 2018 while Brunei
had the smallest in 2006; Saudi Arabia had the largest proportion of female employment
in services in 2008, while Nepal had the smallest in 2006; the Philippines had the largest
gender equality in 2018, while Yemen had the smallest in 2007. Given the vast difference in
the magnitude of different variables, we take the natural logarithm of tourism and GDP
per capita.
Table 1. Descriptive statistics.
Education Employment
Tourism GDPpc
(% of (% of Female Gender
(Number of (Current US
Government Employment Equality
Arrivals) Dollars)
Expenditure) in Services)
Mean 7,693,166 13,619.92 13.8692 59.9639 0.6507
Median 2,989,500 5574.528 13.3700 58.0440 0.6582
Maximum 61,173,559 85,076.15 28.5266 98.669 0.799
Minimum 104,416.7 346.9453 3.8451 10.751 0.451
Std. Dev. 11,696,942 17,105.51 4.2417 25.6791 0.0545
Observations 504 504 504 504 504
4. Results
4.1. Data Stationary Test
Stationary data are the premise of building a PVAR model. In terms of the stationary
test, we first conduct the cross-section dependence test for all variables. The results in
Table 2 show that the null hypothesis of no cross-section dependence is rejected at the 1%
significance level. This implies that all the data series are cross-section dependent.
Table 2. Cross-section dependence tests.
Gender
Lnt LnGDPpc Education Employment
Equality
Breusch-
Pagan 4919.201 *** 4565.246 *** 4371.415 *** 6138.536 *** 2971.595 ***
LM
Pesaran
120.835 *** 110.863 *** 107.177 *** 155.185 *** 65.967 ***
scaled LM
Bias-
corrected 119.450 *** 109.478 *** 105.827 *** 153.801 *** 64.582 ***
scaled LM
Pesaran CD 55.586 *** 54.892 *** 49.722 *** 39.203 *** 26.919 ***
Note: *** indicates the 1% significance level.
Then we conducted a panel unit root test for all data series. The traditional first
generation panel unit root test assumes cross-sectional independence between variables,
which is subjective and unreasonable. However, as shown in Table 2, all variables are
cross-section dependent. Therefore, the first generation panel unit root tests such as the
Levin–Lin–Chu (LLC) test, Breitung test, Fisher test, and Im–Pesaran–Shin (IPS) test may
lead to significant biases [52]. On this account, we use the second generation panel unit root
test to overcome the cross-sectional correlation problem confirmed above by introducing
heterogeneous shocks in multiple unobservable factor models in order to significantly
enhance the reliability of our findings. Table 3 presents the results of panel unit roots tests.
Table 3. Results for panel unit root tests.
IPS CIPS
Variables
Level First Difference Level First Difference
Lnt −2.276 −3.169 *** 2.847 −3.802 ***
lnGDPpc −2.854 −7.104 *** 4.642 −7.814 ***
Education −4.920 * −8.988 *** −2.601 −7.820 ***
Employment −2.004 −4.028 *** 3.285 −4.488 ***
Gender equality −4.868 * −6.209 *** 3.601 −2.111 ***
Notes: * and *** denotes the 10% and 1% significance level, respectively.
Columns 1 and 2 show the IPS panel unit root test for each series. The results show
that only lnt, lnGDPpc, and employment have a unit root. However, as indicated in Table 2,
all variables show cross-sectional dependence. Therefore, we further perform Pesaran’s
CIPS test for panel unit roots [53]. The new test results are shown in columns 3 and 4 in
Table 3. The results clearly show that all data series have a unit root on this condition.
However, the first difference of the panel data series is stationary at the 5% significance
level. Consequently, we can perform the cointegration test.
4.2. Cointegration Test

This section examines the cointegration relationship (i.e., the long-run equilibrium
relationship) amongst tourism, economy, education, employment, and gender equality.
Table 4 presents the results for cointegration tests including the Pedroni test and the Kao
test. For the Pedroni tests, four of the seven p values corresponding to the panel and group
test statistics are smaller than 0.05, indicating that at the 5% or less significance level, the
five analyzed variables are panel cointegrated. The results for the Kao test also confirm
that there is a co-integration relationship among these five analyzed variables at the 5%
significance level. Conclusively, there is a long-run equilibrium relationship amongst Asian
tourism, economy, employment, education, and gender equality.
Table 4. Panel cointegration tests for lnt, lnGDPpc, education, employment, and gender equality.
Pedroni Test
Statistic Prob.
Panel v-Statistic (Weighted) −2.483223 0.9935
Panel rho-Statistic (Weighted) 2.663759 0.9961
Panel PP-Statistic (Weighted) −5.952443 0.0000
Panel ADF-Statistic (Weighted) −1.663673 0.0481
Group rho-Statistic 5.163099 1.0000
Group PP-Statistic −8.824778 0.0000
Group ADF-Statistic −1.464907 0.0415
Kao Test
ADF −1.315273 0.0442
4.3. Impulse Response Analysis

Here we present the impulse response curves for the whole Asian sample and three
subsamples as shown in Figures 1–4. The vertical axis represents the deviation percentage,
and the horizontal axis represents the lag time of the shock. Impulse response function
describes the unit impact of one variable on other variables in the system and provides
4.3. Impulse Response Analysis
Here we present the impulse response curves for the whole Asian sample and three
Sustainability 2022, 14, 12156 subsamples as shown in Figures 1–4. The vertical axis represents the deviation percentage,
7 of 18
and the horizontal axis represents the lag time of the shock. Impulse response function
describes the unit impact of one variable on other variables in the system and provides
information such as positive and negative direction of impact, adjustment lag period, and
information such as positive and negative direction of impact, adjustment lag period,
stabilization process. The orthogonalization of the VAR residuals is conducive to segre-
and stabilization process. The orthogonalization of the VAR residuals is conducive to
gating the response of the economy, education, employment, and gender equality to a
segregating the response of the economy, education, employment, and gender equality
shock on tourism. We synthesize our investigation into three categories: the impulse re-
to a shock on tourism. We synthesize our investigation into three categories: the impulse
sponse functions of gender equality to tourism shock; the impulse response functions of
response functions of gender equality to tourism shock; the impulse response functions of
the economy, education, and employment to tourism shock; the impulse response func-
the economy, education, and employment to tourism shock; the impulse response functions
tions of gender equality to the economy, education, and employment shocks.
of gender equality to the economy, education, and employment shocks.
Figure 1. Impulse responses for 2 lag VAR (according to Schwarz information criterion) of tourism,
lnGDPpc,
lnGDPpc, education, employment,and
education, employment, andgender
genderininAsia.
Asia.Solid
Solid lines
lines denote
denote impulse
impulse response
response curves
curves
and
anddotted
dotted lines
lines denote 95% confidence
denote 95% confidenceinterval
intervalbands
bandsgenerated
generated byby Monte
Monte Carlo
Carlo simulation
simulation with
with
1000
1000repetitions.
repetitions.
Figure 1 illustrates the Asian impulse response functions that imply the dynamic rela-
tionship among tourism, economy, education, employment, and gender equality. Figure 1
also shows that responding to a positive shock to tourism, the gender equality originally
declines and afterward rises marginally and steadies in the long run. Additionally, the
increase in tourism leads to an initial increase and subsequent slight decrease in GDP that
steadies in the long run. In response to a positive shock to tourism, education fluctuates
marginally and steadies in the long run. Moreover, Figure 1 displays that a positive shock
to tourism in Asia exerts a significantly positive impact on employment. The results in

Figure 1 simultaneously imply that a positive shock to the economy produces a positive
impact on gender equality, a positive shock to education produces a positive-negative
Sustainability 2022, 14, x FOR PEER REVIEW 8 of 19
volatile impact on gender equality, and a positive shock to employment produces a slight
negative impact on gender equality.
lnGDPpc, education, employment, and gender in East and Southeast Asia. Solid lines denote impulse
lnGDPpc, education, employment, and gender in East and Southeast Asia. Solid lines denote im-
response curvescurves
pulse response and dotted lines denote
and dotted 95% confidence
lines denote interval
95% confidence bands
interval generated
bands by Monte
generated Carlo
by Monte
simulation with 1000
Carlo simulation withrepetitions.
1000 repetitions.
In the East and Southeast Asian countries, Figure 2 shows that in the case of a positive
shock to tourism, gender equality originally declines and later sharply increases and
steadies in the long run. The increase in tourism leads to an initial increase and subsequent
decrease in GDP that steadies in the long run. The impact of a positive shock to tourism on
education fluctuates between positive and negative and steadies in the long run. Differently,
employment reacts from negatively to positively to a positive shock to tourism and then
reaches its steady state. Figure 2 also clearly demonstrates that among the economy,
education and employment, the increase in education has the smallest impact on gender
equality. Surprisingly, the economic growth basically negatively affects gender equality.

Responding to the increase in employment, gender equality initially declines and then
increases and steadies in the long run.
Figure3.3.Impulse
Figure Impulse responses for 22lag
responses for lagVAR
VAR(according
(accordingtotoSchwarz
Schwarz information
information criterion)
criterion) of tourism,
of tourism,
lnGDPpc,
lnGDPpc,education,
education, employment,
employment, andandgender
genderininSouth
SouthAsia.
Asia.Solid
Solid lines
lines denote
denote impulse
impulse response
response
curves
curvesand
anddotted
dotted lines 95%confidence
lines denote 95% confidenceinterval
intervalbands
bandsgenerated
generatedbyby Monte
Monte Carlo
Carlo simulation
simulation
with1000
with 1000repetitions.
repetitions.
Figure 3 displays the impulse response functions of South Asia, implying the dynamic
relationship among the tourism, economy, education, employment and gender equality. The
results show that a positive shock to tourism has a slight negative impact on gender equality
at the beginning and then positively affects gender equality. The impact steadies in the
long run. The economy initially responds positively to a positive shock to tourism in South
Asia and later responds negatively and steadies in the long run. The increase in tourism
has a bit effect on education, while it significantly increases employment. In South Asia,
similar to tourism, economic growth also initially negatively and then positively affects
gender equality and steadies in the long run. The impact of education and employment on
gender equality fluctuates between negative and positive and then reaches a steady state.
Figure4.4.Impulse
Figure Impulse responses
responses forfor22lag
lagVAR
VAR(according
(according
to to Schwarz
Schwarz information
information criterion)
criterion) of tourism,
of tourism,
lnGDPpc,
lnGDPpc,education,
education, employment,
employment, and andgender
genderininWest
West and
and Central
Central Asia.
Asia. Solid
Solid lineslines denote
denote impulse
impulse
responsecurves
response curvesand
and dotted
dotted lines
linesdenote
denote95%
95%confidence
confidenceinterval bands
interval bandsgenerated
generatedby Monte CarloCarlo
by Monte
simulationwith
simulation with1000
1000 repetitions.
repetitions.
Figure41shows
Figure illustrates
the the Asianresponse
impulse impulse response
functionsfunctions
of Westthat
andimply theAsia.
Central dynamic
There-results
lationship among tourism, economy, education, employment, and gender
demonstrate that a positive shock to tourism initially increases gender equality equality. Figure
and later
1 also shows
decreases andthat responding
steadies in thetolong
a positive shock to tourism,
run. Moreover, the gender
in general, equality originally
the increase in tourism in
declines and afterward rises marginally and steadies in the long
West and Central Asia exerts a slight positive effect on economic growth, run. Additionally,
education,the and
increase in tourism leads to an initial increase and subsequent slight decrease in GDP that
employment. We find that both employment and education have a bit impact on gender
steadies in the long run. In response to a positive shock to tourism, education fluctuates
equality. Additionally, a positive shock to the economy has an initial negative and later
marginally and steadies in the long run. Moreover, Figure 1 displays that a positive shock
positive effect on gender equality and steadies in the long run.
to tourism in Asia exerts a significantly positive impact on employment. The results in
Figure
4.4. 1 simultaneously
Granger Causality Testsimply that a positive shock to the economy produces a positive
impact on gender equality, a positive shock to education produces a positive-negative
To gain
volatile a better
impact understanding
on gender equality, andofathe relationship
positive shock to between
employment tourism, economy,
produces a slight edu-
cation, employment, and gender
negative impact on gender equality. equality, we further test the Granger causality between
these analyzed variables for the whole sample and three subsamples. We employ a 1
lag GMM-PVEC model to test short-run causality and a 2 lag GMM-PVAR model to test
long-run causality. The results for the Granger-causality tests are reported in Tables 5 and 6.
We also summarize our analyses into three categories according with the impulse response
analyses above.
Table 5. Results for short-run Granger causality tests.
Asia East and Southeast Asia South Asia West and Central Asia
Dependent Excluded Prob. Dependent Excluded Prob. Dependent Excluded Prob. Dependent Excluded Prob.
Variable Variable Variable Variable
D(lnGDPpc) 0.0686 D(lnGDPpc) 0.4028 D(lnGDPpc) 0.1667 D(lnGDPpc) 0.7873
D(Education) 0.0000 D(Education) 0.0070 D(Education) 0.1830 D(Education) 0.0000
D(Tourism) D(Employment) 0.1047 D(Tourism) D(Employment) 0.0682 D(Tourism) D(Employment) 0.1722 D(Tourism) D(Employment) 0.1214
D(Gender) 0.6225 D(Gender) 0.0235 D(Gender) 0.2068 D(Gender) 0.3536
All 0.0000 All 0.0347 All 0.0406 All 0.0000
D(Tourism) 0.4524 D(Tourism) 0.9978 D(Tourism) 0.0366 D(Tourism) 0.4690
D(Education) 0.0761 D(Education) 0.0476 D(Education) 0.3567 D(Education) 0.4754
D(lnGDPpc) D(Employment) 0.3284 D(lnGDPpc) D(Employment) 0.7185 D(lnGDPpc) D(Employment) 0.5182 D(lnGDPpc) D(Employment) 0.4990
All 0.3136 All 0.0976 All 0.1916 All 0.4086
D(Education) D(Employment) 0.3257 D(Education) D(Employment) 0.0291 D(Education) D(Employment) 0.5446 D(Education) D(Employment) 0.5996
All 0.0000 All 0.0000 All 0.3456 All 0.0001
D(Employment) D(Education) 0.0732 D(Employment) D(Education) 0.0387 D(Employment) D(Education) 0.7909 D(Employment) D(Education) 0.0285
All 0.0193 All 0.0000 All 0.6809 All 0.2697
D(Gender) D(Education) 0.0750 D(Gender) D(Education) 0.1885 D(Gender) D(Education) 0.1133 D(Gender) D(Education) 0.1001
D(Employment) 0.4904 D(Employment) 0.0522 D(Employment) 0.8083 D(Employment) 0.2857
All 0.6387 All 0.0065 All 0.4753 All 0.2649
Table 6. Results for long-run Granger causality tests.
Asia East and Southeast Asia South Asia West and Central Asia
Dependent Excluded Prob. Dependent Excluded Prob. Dependent Excluded Prob. Dependent Excluded Prob.
Variable Variable Variable Variable
lnGDPpc 0.7869 lnGDPpc 0.0007 lnGDPpc 0.0694 lnGDPpc 0.4551
Education 0.0972 Education 0.1100 Education 0.6766 Education 0.3113
Tourism Employment 0.4179 Tourism Employment 0.5383 Tourism Employment 0.2517 Tourism Employment 0.6354
Gender 0.1065 Gender 0.0491 Gender 0.3018 Gender 0.1144
All 0.0254 All 0.0168 All 0.0287 All 0.0827
Tourism 0.0265 Tourism 0.4831 Tourism 0.2244 Tourism 0.9401
Education 0.7739 Education 0.1375 Education 0.6046 Education 0.7472
lnGDPpc Employment 0.0858 lnGDPpc Employment 0.0432 lnGDPpc Employment 0.8776 lnGDPpc Employment 0.7616
All 0.5075 All 0.0276 All 0.1714 All 0.5432
Education Employment 0.2443 Education Employment 0.2076 Education Employment 0.4042 Education Employment 0.5066
All 0.7756 All 0.2334 All 0.7856 All 0.8549
Employment Education 0.5062 Employment Education 0.0155 Employment Education 0.9277 Employment Education 0.0422
All 0.5483 All 0.0096 All 0.0483 All 0.4226
Gender Education 0.0762 Gender Education 0.9348 Gender Education 0.1898 Gender Education 0.1776
Employment 0.0676 Employment 0.0082 Employment 0.5756 Employment 0.0847
All 0.0706 All 0.0413 All 0.6071 All 0.5563
4.4.1. Short-Run Granger Causality

In the short run, for the whole Asian sample, tourism is not the Granger cause for
economic growth (p = 0.4524) but not vice versa (p = 0.0686). The null hypothesis that
tourism is not the Granger cause for education (p = 0.0000) and employment (p = 0.0176)
is rejected at the 1% significance level. The null hypothesis that education is not the
Granger cause for tourism is rejected at the 1% significance level (p = 0.0000), while the null
hypothesis that employment is not the Granger cause for tourism is accepted (p = 0.1047).
In the short run, tourism is not the Granger cause for gender equality (p = 0.7869) and vice
versa (p = 0.6225). Additionally, there are no Granger causalities between the economy and
gender equality, employment, and gender equality. However, we find the unidirectional
Granger causality running from education to gender equality (p = 0.0750).
Specific to the east and southeast Asian countries, in the short run, Table 5 demon-
strates that there is no Granger causality between tourism and economy (p = 0.4028 and
p = 0.9978). There is a unidirectional Granger causality running from tourism to employ-
ment (p = 0.0621). Education unidirectionally Granger causes tourism (p = 0.0070). Different
from the whole sample, the results show that there is a bidirectional Granger causality
between tourism and gender equality (p = 0.0235 and p = 0.0387). In the East and Southeast
Asian countries, Table 5 indicates the bidirectional Granger causality between employment
and gender equality (p = 0.0000 and p = 0.0522) and the unidirectional Granger causalities
running from gender equality to the economy (p = 0.0542) and education (p = 0.0042).
In the South Asian countries, the results in Table 5 demonstrate that tourism unidi-
rectionally Granger causes the economy (p = 0.0366), education (p = 0.0890), employment
(p = 0.0018), and gender equality (p = 0.0075). There are no Granger causalities between
the economy and gender equality, education and gender equality, employment and gender
equality. In the west and central Asian countries, tourism is the Granger cause for education
(p = 0.0000), and vice versa (p = 0.0000). Tourism is the Granger cause for employment
(p = 0.0790), but not vice versa (p = 0.1214). There is no Granger causality between tourism
and gender equality. Also, we find no Granger causality between the economy or education
or employment and gender equality
4.4.2. Long-Run Granger Causality

Table 6 reports the long-run causality tests for the whole Asian sample and three
sub-regions. Table 6 shows that in Asia, tourism is the Granger cause for gender equality at
the 1% significance level (p = 0.0097). Also, tourism unidirectionally Granger causes the
economy, education and employment (p = 0.0265, p = 0.0206 and p = 0.0399). The economy,
education, and employment are the Granger causes for gender equality at the 5%, 10%, and
10% significance level, respectively. We find no bidirectional Granger causality between
tourism, economy, education, employment, and gender equality.
In the east and southeast Asian countries, there is a long-run bidirectional Granger
causality between tourism and gender equality (p = 0.0491 and p = 0.0468). Also, tourism
unidirectionally Granger causes education at the 10% significance level (p = 0.0515). Both
the economy and education in East and Southeast Asia are not the Granger causes for
gender equality. On the contrary, employment unidirectionally Granger causes gender
equality (p = 0.0082), and vice versa (p = 0.0238).
In South Asia, there is a long-run unidirectional Granger causality running from
tourism to gender equality at the 1% significance level (p = 0.0071). Tourism also unidirec-
tionally Granger causes employment at the 5% significance level (p = 0.0299). Moreover, the
economy unidirectionally Granger causes tourism at the 10% significance level in the long
run (p = 0.0694). There exists a long-run unidirectional Granger causality running from the
economy to gender equality in South Asia. In the west and central Asian countries, Table 6
indicates that tourism is still the Granger cause for gender equality at the 1% significance
level (p = 0.0044). In addition, employment unidirectionally Granger causes gender equality
at the 10% significance level (p = 0.0847). However, there is no Granger causality running
from both the economy and education to gender equality.
5. Discussion
Our results clearly demonstrate a long-run equilibrium relationship amongst tourism,
economy, employment, education, and gender equality for both the whole sample and
three subsamples. Although both tourism and gender equality series are not stationary,
their linear combination becomes stationary. This further suggests that in the long run,
tourism and gender equality possess a common drift. Gender equality may be deviated
from equilibrium by some random disturbance in the short term; however, this deviation
will return to equilibrium over time through the channels of tourism and the other three
variables. This new finding confirms the long-run intrinsic relationship between tourism
and gender equality, which provides a theoretical basis for achieving gender equality
through developing tourism.
Our results also demonstrate that tourism contributes to realizing gender equality.
This conclusion is consistent with the studies of Zhang and Zhang [1], Ferguson [5], Gil
Arroyo et al. [6], and Nguyen [11]; however, we found something new. For example, the
impulse response results show that the impact of tourism on gender equality shifts between
positive and negative in different periods and will reach a steady state in the long run.
Overall, tourism is the Granger cause for gender equality for both the whole Asian sample
and three subsamples. This implies that developing tourism could narrow the gender gap.
As indicated in extensive case studies, tourism positively affects gender equality through
the economy, employment, and education. Our research confirms the role of tourism in
promoting these three factors.
Tourism involves a wide variety of positions that have different entry requirements. In
general, the entry threshold for tourism employment is relatively low, which is conducive
to attracting a large number of female laborers who are less competitive than men. In other
words, the employment opportunities for women in tourism are greater than those in the
broader economy. Therefore, tourism provides more jobs for women and in turn increases
their income and enhances their status in families and society. Similarly, as argued by
Moswete and Lacey [33], tourism also provides more opportunities for women’s education.
This is more about vocational skills than schooling, which makes women more versatile
in tourism services. All in all, with the development of tourism, the economy, employ-
ment, and education opportunities for women have increased. In this context, traditional
dominant patriarchal gender discourse and practices are gradually being challenged.
According to the impulse response results, it seems difficult to judge the direction of
the impact of the economy, education, and employment on gender equality as the impulse
response curve fluctuates significantly. By contrast, the results for Granger causality tests
clearly show that these three variables significantly contribute to the realization of gender
equality in the long run but have opposite results in the short run. The same is valid for
tourism. In the short run, tourism cannot lead to gender equality either. Hence, developing
tourism, economy and education as well as increasing women’s employment cannot lead
to the short-run improvement of women’s status.
We also found heterogeneous impulse response functions and Granger causalities
between tourism and gender equality across the regions. In East and Southeast Asia, the
results indicate that the impact of a positive shock to tourism on gender equality fluctuates
the most. The Granger causalities also indicate that tourism causes gender equality at the
least significance level in the long run. That is, compared with other regions, tourism has
the weakest positive effect on gender equality in East and Southeast Asia. On the contrary,
tourism in South Asia leads most to gender equality. In West and Central Asia, tourism
basically shows a positive impact on gender equality.
Surprisingly, the economy does not contribute to gender equality in East and Southeast
Asia and West and Central Asia. East and Southeast Asia are the world’s leading tourist
destinations, with China, Japan, and Thailand, which makes great achievements in inbound
tourism. Additionally, the major developed countries in Asia are concentrated in this
region, such as South Korea, Japan, and Singapore. However, according to The Global
Gender Gap Report, these countries with higher economic achievements score lower on the
gender equality index. In contrast, the Philippines has long ranked first in Asia and the top
10 in the world in terms of the gender equality index. As a result, the economy does not
explain the gender gap in East and Southeast Asia. At this point, the culture may be more
persuasive.
It is well known that the Confucian culture and Islamic culture dominate East and
Southeast Asia. In this cultural atmosphere, the idea of men being superior to women is
deeply rooted. Even in highly developed countries such as Japan, the status of women
remains low, resulting in that Japan’s gender equality has long ranked outside the top
100 worldwide. The same is true in West and Central Asia, where popular Islamic culture
makes it difficult to distribute economic development achievements to women, thus leading
to a lower index of gender equality. Exceptionally, we find a high index of gender equality
in the Philippines, which may be related to its more popular Christian culture. This finding
is actually not new and is similar to the studies of Alrwajfah et al. [39] and Uduji et al. [40],
who found that conservative social traditions and customs hinder the narrowing of the
gender gap. This further confirms the findings of Kabeer [15], who concluded that the
impact of economic growth on gender equality is regionally heterogeneous.
We noticed that compared to the economy, tourism contributes more to gender equality.
This implies that the effect of tourism on gender equality is reflected in not only the material
resources such as the economy and employment but also the social resources such as culture
to a large extent. Tourism differs greatly from the other economic industries in that tourism
does not produce “cold” and “inanimate” consumer goods but provides “warm” and
“living” services face to face. Furthermore, tourism activities are mainly characterized
by person-to-person communication. This determines the significant cultural exchange
characteristics of the production and consumption of tourism products. Furthermore,
tourism in this study is measured as the number of inbound tourist arrivals. The interaction
of the extremely different cultures between tourism destinations and tourist sources is
significantly conducive to promoting women’s status. Given this background, tourism is
more powerful than any other economic tool for promoting gender equality. Therefore,
developing tourism, especially inbound tourism, plays a vital role in achieving gender
equality in destinations.
Based on these findings and the discussion above, we underline some important policy
implications on tourism and gender equality. First, in Asia, we should increase support for
developing tourism, especially inbound tourism, and vigorously strengthen marketing for
tourist source markets with high gender equality index (mainly referring to European and
North American markets), thereby changing the traditional gender perceptions through
the cultural function of tourism. Second, in tourism, investment in women’s service
skills, training, and education should be increased to guarantee women’s access to finance,
markets, technology, and information. In this way, women can be retained and given
more opportunities for promotion and decision-making. Third, we should balance the
wages of men and women and implement the rules and regulations of equal pay for equal
work in tourism, thus propagandizing and establishing the corporate culture of gender
equality. Fourth, we should provide an environment conducive to women’s employment
and entrepreneurship in tourism, which includes laws, policies, and welfare, so that
women can be gradually freed from the constraints of their families and conservative
patriarchal culture.
6. Concluding Remarks
This study investigates the endogenous relationships among tourism, economy, ed-
ucation, employment, and gender equality by using the GMM-PVAR technique based
on panel data from 36 Asian countries over the period 2006–2019. The results show the
long-run equilibrium relationship among tourism, gender equality, economy, education,
and employment. Furthermore, developing tourism is conducive to narrowing the gender

gap, which however differs significantly across different Asian regions. The positive impact
of tourism on the economy, education, and employment also varies significantly across East
and Southeast Asia, South Asia, and West and Central Asia. All the economy, education,
and employment mostly contribute to realizing gender equality, but such a contribution
is not decisive. Tourism promotes gender equality more than the economy, education,
and employment. Relative to the economic function, the cultural role of tourism is more
beneficial to the realization of gender equality to some extent.
This article provides new economics insights into the subfield of tourism and gender
equality and contributes significantly to addressing the research gap focusing only on
sociological ones indicated by Figueroa-Domecq et al. [2]. Furthermore, we provide a
novel econometric analytical framework to explore the cointegration, dynamic, and causal
relationships between tourism and gender equality, which can be applied to various regions
beyond Asian countries. In conclusion, the study assigns an interdisciplinary character to
the field of tourism and gender equality.
Despite the robust results obtained using the GMM-PVAR approach, one limitation
of this study lies in that our conclusions may not be applicable in individual regions due
to the special socio-economic characteristics of a particular country. Future studies could
explore the relationship between the five analyzed variables based on national time series
data. Besides, as explained in the article, the culture variable may play an important role
in gender equality, which however is not explored in the current study due to limitations
in data availability. Thus, quantifying the impact of culture on the relationship between
tourism and gender equality appears to be also interesting and important in the future.
Finally, gender equality in this study in nature is a comprehensive indicator and has
many components; however, we do not explore the effect of tourism on each component.
Future studies thus could be conducted by extending the proxies for gender equality by
introducing more segmented indicators, thereby leading to a more in-depth understanding
of the impact of tourism on gender equality.
Author Contributions: Conceptualization, S.X.; Data curation, Y.Z.; Funding acquisition, Y.Z. and
J.Z.; Methodology, J.Z.; Writing—original draft, Y.Z.; Writing—review & editing, S.X. and J.Z. All
authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research was funded by [Improvement Project of Young and Middle-aged Teachers’
Research Ability in Guangxi’s Colleges] grant number [2020KY22018] and [National Natural Science
Foundation of China] grant number [71764027]. And The APC was funded by National Natural
Science Foundation of China] grant number [71764027].
Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available on request
from the corresponding author.
Acknowledgments: This work was supported by the Improvement Project of Young and Middle-
aged Teachers’ Research Ability in Guangxi’s Colleges under Grant 2020KY22018 and National
Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 71764027.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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1 School of Tourism Management, Guilin Tourism University, Guilin 541006, China

Citation: Zhang, Y.; Xu, S.; Zhang, J.

Sustainability 2022, 14, 12156. https://doi.org/10.3390/su141912156 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability

tourism as well [24,25]. Therefore, as mentioned above, extensive published literature

3. Methods and Materials

3.2. Empirical Region and Data Collection

Table 1. Descriptive statistics.

Table 2. Cross-section dependence tests.

Table 3. Results for panel unit root tests.

4.2. Cointegration Test

4.3. Impulse Response Analysis

to tourism in Asia exerts a significantly positive impact on employment. The results in

Sustainability 2022, 14, x FOR PEER REVIEW 9 of 19

Table 5. Results for short-run Granger causality tests.

Table 6. Results for long-run Granger causality tests.

4.4.1. Short-Run Granger Causality

4.4.2. Long-Run Granger Causality

and employment. Furthermore, developing tourism is conducive to narrowing the gender

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