Journal of Economic Surveys - 2022 - Rossell Nadal - Gravity Models For Tourism Demand Modeling Empirical Review and

14676419, 2022, 5, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joes.12502 by Readcube (Labtiva Inc.), Wiley Online Library on [06/12/2022].
See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
DOI: 10.1111/joes.12502
ARTICLE
Gravity models for tourism demand modeling:

Empirical review and outlook
Jaume Rosselló Nadal María Santana Gallego
Department of Applied Economics,

University of the Balearic Islands, Abstract
Balearic Islands, Spain Tourism demand and its determining factors have been
Correspondence extensively explored over the past decades. Traditionally,
María Santana Gallego, Department of the study of tourism demand modeling had focused on
Applied Economics, University of the
the use of time series models and forecasting. Nonethe-
Balearic Islands, Balearic Islands, Spain.
Email: maria.santana@uib.es less, during the last years the literature has revived
the approach of gravity models, centered on structural
dimension as opposed to dynamic factors. This survey
aims to provide a useful overview and detailed infor-
mation that discipline the existing literature and help
future researchers about this field. To do so, this study
reviews 143 key published papers that apply a grav-
ity equation framework to tourism demand revealing
that it has been used mainly in the context of bilateral
tourist movements. Results show how, although the list
of determining variables of tourist flows can be very
large, GDP, population and distance are the most pre-
ponderant ones. Moreover, there are important chal-
lenges to be addressed by researchers in terms of empir-
ical application of structural gravity models to tourism.
KEYWORDS
gravity model, panel estimation, tourism demand modeling
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduc-
tion in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
© 2022 The Authors. Journal of Economic Surveys published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
1358 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/joes J Econ Surv. 2022;36:1358–1409.

14676419, 2022, 5, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joes.12502 by Readcube (Labtiva Inc.), Wiley Online Library on [06/12/2022]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
ROSSELLÓ NADAL and SANTANA GALLEGO 1359
1 INTRODUCTION
Multiple literature reviews have shown how attempts to model aggregate tourism demand mainly
relied on single equation specifications and the use of time series models (Crouch, 1994; Li et al.,
2005; Lim, 1997, 1999; Peng et al., 2014; W. Song & Li, 2008; W. Song et al., 2019; Witt & Witt,
1995). Under this framework, total flows of tourists to a single destination during different peri-
ods are correlated with past behavior of the same variable and/or depend on different macroeco-
nomic time series determinants, such as income levels, price indices, exchange rates, marketing
expenditure, special events or any other influential measurable factor at country-level. The use of
single-equation specifications and time series analysis would be driven by the short-lived nature
of services and the tourism industry’s particular requirement for accurate demand forecasting.
However, if the objective of the tourism demand analysis goes beyond pure forecasting but
research focuses on quantifying the effect of a specific determining factor to assess the impact
from a certain phenomenon (diseases, climate change, corruption, etc.) or policy (tourist tax, visa
policy, etc.) on tourism demand, time series and single equation specifications fail to provide a sig-
nificant evaluation of a regional/cross-countries phenomenon. In turn, single equation demand
models have been criticized for being rather ad hoc and omitting relevant variables that explain
their structure (Durbarry, 2008; Sinclair, 1998).
The structural dimension of tourism demand bases its theoretical underpinnings on the microe-
conomic theory of tourism demand and, consequently, this demand has been analyzed exten-
sively by microeconomic modelling exercises (Brida & Scuderi, 2013; Wang & Davidson, 2010).
At aggregate level, the cross-sectional heterogeneity of tourism demand can be incorporated
into multiple equation specifications through the consideration of a system of equations or
through the Almost Ideal Demand System (De Mello et al., 2001; Durbarry & Sinclair, 2003;
Papatheodorou, 1999). Nevertheless, where aggregate tourism demand analysis focuses on cross-
sectional heterogeneity—including the longitudinal dimension or not—the gravity model has
commonly been the specification used (Morley et al., 2014).
The term gravity comes from the analogy between the simplest version of the model and
Newton’s law of universal gravitation, where the transport patterns between two nodes are directly
proportional to the nodes’ size and inversely proportional to the distance between them. The con-
cept of the node is related to a regional aggregation (city, region, country...); node size is captured
mainly by population and economic activity; and distance can include not only geographical dis-
tance but also connectivity, travel costs, border facilities, etc. The gravity model was first applied
to tourism flows in the 1960s, where the determining factors of trips between city-pairs were mod-
elled under a gravity framework (Pyers, 1966; Quandt & Baumol, 1966, 1969; Wilson, 1967). Since
then, gravity models have been extensively applied in transport (Acheampong & Silva, 2015), trade
(Anderson, 2011) and migration literature (Ortega & Peri, 2013). However, despite academic recog-
nition and widespread use in neighboring research areas, the gravity equation had been neglected
by tourism demand modeling exercises until the 2000s, when the gravity model intensively re-
emerged within academic tourism literature.
There are numerous meta-analyses and review articles about tourism demand modeling and
forecasting (Crouch, 1994; Goh & Law, 2011; Li et al., 2005; W. Song & Li, 2008; W. Song et al.,
2019; Witt & Witt, 1995; Wu et al., 2017; among others). In general, these studies contribute to the
theoretical and methodological development of tourism demand modeling by paying attention to
methods and variables used mainly in the context of time series but without hardly mentioning
the gravity model. In this way, and after the extraordinary and recent proliferation of empirical
1360 ROSSELLÓ NADAL and SANTANA GALLEGO
exercises using the gravity equation in the tourism framework the present survey is the first
attempt to review papers that apply gravity model to explain tourism demand. Understanding
the state of the art regarding methods and models is the basis to provide a useful overview and
detailed information that discipline the existing literature and help future researchers about this
field.
Therefore, the objective of this study is to explore why gravity models have re-emerged on
tourism demand modeling and to review, for the first time, the most influential papers that apply
this framework to the tourism economic literature. The paper does not aim to provide a meta-
analysis on the main estimates or elasticities but to present an overview on the main variables and
methods used. Moreover, the survey pretends to be critical with the main models and methodolo-
gies applied and to identify drawbacks and limitations on this area of research. To do so, firstly, in
Section 2, a summary of the origins of the gravity model and the basic economic theory considered
as reference in the context of tourism demand are presented. In Section 3, the paper discusses a
review based on an analysis of 143 papers published from 1966 to 2021, analyzing the used depen-
dent and independent variables and the geographical context. In Section 4, models and estima-
tion methodologies are explored. Finally, Section 5 discusses main empirical results and Section 6
presents conclusions and some future research directions.
2 RESEARCH HISTORY AND THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS
2.1 A short history about the application of the gravity model in

tourism
According to Philbrick (1976), one of the first analogies for the use of Newton’s gravitational law in
the context of the movement of people was made by Carey (1877), although it was not quantified
until Ravenstein (1885), who took the case of migrant flows being expected to increase alongside
population and decrease with the distance between home and destination region. The use of grav-
itational models in the framework of international trade finds its origin in Reilly (1929), who used
the concept of gravity in explaining the way in which a city attracts trade from an individual in
its surrounding territory. The first reference to the use of the gravity model in the context of what
today we understand as tourism, seems to come from Zipf (1946), who showed that the number
of persons traveling by different modes of transport between any two communities in the United
States would be proportional to the ratio between the product of populations divided by distance,
and be subject to the effect of other modifying factors. Tinbergen (1962) was the first to use gravity
to explain trade flows, and this is still considered to be the seminal paper on this topic. Thereafter,
Anderson (1979) and Bergstrand (1985) were the first to offer a theoretical economic foundation
for gravity models.
Initially, research around the gravity model was mostly framed within the field of sociology
rather than in transport, and the model was mainly used to explain interurban trips (Philbrick,
1976). From the mid-1950s, the gravity model began to be used to analyze and predict both urban
and interurban traffic (and an important tourism link appeared here); greater sophistication in
the model began to become evident, both in theoretical aspects and application. In this context,
Quandt and Baumol (1966) and Quandt and Young (1969) analyzed different city pair trips from/to
California on different modes of transport, and Long (1970) applied a gravity equation for trips
between the 13 largest metropolitan areas in the US.
TA B L E 1 Presence of word “gravity” in tourism journals

Ebscohost (Hospitality & Tourism Complete)
Scopus All fields Selected keyword
n % n % n %
2001 & previous 10 5% 36 8% 0 0%
2002–2006 3 1% 71 17% 4 4%
2007–2011 15 7% 98 23% 13 12%
2012–2016 45 22% 114 27% 32 29%
2017–2021 130 64% 137 32% 61 55%
Total 203 425 110
Note: Scopus search about the word “gravity” and “tourism” in the abstract, keyword or title; Search limited to “Social Science,”
“Business, Management and Accounting” and “Environmental Science” subject areas and only in Journal Articles. Ebscohost
(Hospitality & Tourism Complete) search about the word “gravity” in any item and the word “gravity” in the authors’ supplied
keywords. Searches done on the December 3th, 2021.
The first papers to specifically address tourist movements appeared in the 1970s. Armstrong
(1972) defined a specification that resemble a gravity model to predict tourist movements between
18 countries. The model was augmented by including a time dimension to explain changes in
variables such as leisure time and population. Malamud (1973) analyzed the movement of tourists
between 44 US regions/states. McAllister and Klett (1976) studied ski trips within California and
Crampon and Tan (1973) forecasted international tourism flows into the Pacific by using income
per capita and travel costs; among other determinants.
In the 1980s, Smith and Brown (1981) added a component to represent the force which makes
traveling in one direction preferable to traveling in the opposite one, finding that this compo-
nent for Canada was westerly bias, and statistically significant over an 11-year period. Fothering-
ham (1983) examined the misspecification of the estimated distance parameters in gravity models,
proposing the introduction of interaction parameters. Finally, Smith (1985) analyzed the propen-
sity to take holiday trips from the US National Travel Survey, finding that geographical variables
are frequently more important predictors of holiday travel patterns than traditional aggregate
socioeconomic variables.
In the mid-1980s, literature on gravity models applied to tourist movements fades, entering in
hibernation for about 20 years. This is evidenced by different literature reviews of tourism demand
modeling and forecasting. Sheldon and Var (1985) and Uysal and Crompton (1985) presented the
gravity model as one of the main quantitative alternatives for modeling and forecasting tourism
demand—at the same level as time series analysis and multivariate modeling. Later, the reviews
from Crouch (1994) and Witt and Witt (1995) merely mentioned it, but without adding any new
contributions to previous reviews. Subsequent reviews from Lim (1997; 1999), W. Song and Li
(2008), Liu et al. (2019), and Jiao and Chen (2019) simply failed to include any reference to the
gravity model. Only the last review by W. Song et al. (2019) showed how the gravity model has
re-emerged in a research context for tourism demand modeling over the last 15 years.
As shown in Table 1, a search of the Scopus and Ebscohost (Hospitality & Tourism Complete)
databases testifies to how the word “gravity” in tourism-related journals has become very popular
over the last decade, and particularly over the last five years. Thus, a search for “gravity” and
“tourism” in the abstracts, titles or keywords in the Scopus database (restricted to our areas of
interest) resulted in 130 journal articles published over the period 2017–2021, that is, 64% of all
papers in the database with the same selected criteria. Searches in the Ebscohost (Hospitality &
Tourism Complete) showed similar illustrative results.
2.2 Theoretical underpinnings for the gravity equation in tourism
Any application, no matter how popular it has become, requires a solid theoretical foundation. In
the context of international trade, different attempts to adapt the gravity equation have appeared
in line with various theoretical economic models. Anderson (1979) derives the gravity equation
from a model assuming product differentiation, while Bergstrand (1985, 1989) looks at the gravity
equation with simple monopolistic competition models. Helpman and Krugman (1985) defined
a theoretical framework that considered differentiated product with increasing returns to justify
the gravity model. Deardorff (1998) argues that gravity for international trade can be founded with
both traditional sets-ups that focus on factor endowments and technology gaps but also by “new
trade theories” that highlight the role played by market imperfections and product differentiation.
Anderson and van Wincoop (2001) derive a gravity model, dealing with the so-called border puz-
zle, by considering a CEC expenditure system. As summarized by Arkolakis et al. (2012), Head
and Mayer (2014), and Costinot and Rodríguez-Clare (2014), many of trade models justifies the
use of gravity models for bilateral trade.
However, although international tourism can be seen as a type of trade in services, adapting
trade theories to tourism is not straightforward. From a theoretical standpoint, it is probably indi-
vidual utility, and not company benefits, which underlies tourist behavior. Colwell (1982) argues
that the aggregate demand for trips that can be derived from overall utility maximization subject
to income and time constraints, can reflect all the features of the traditional gravity model. More
recently, Morley et al. (2014) provided a theoretical background to the gravity model for bilateral
derived from individual utility theory.
Another attempt to provide theoretical justification of gravity model for tourism demand is
the paper by Santana-Gallego and Paniagua (2022). These authors modify the gravity model of
migration of Anderson (2011) to explain bilateral tourism. According to this model, foreign tourists
receive a leisure income, in terms of travel satisfaction, when they visit a destination country. This
reward is the specific capacity of the country’s tourist industry to increase the utility of tourists.
Moreover, tourists also pay a cost to travel, that can be modelled as an iceberg cost. In this modified
version, the tourists maximize their utility by choosing to travel between multiple destinations,
including traveling domestically. The general expression derived from economic theory and rep-
resenting the dependence of aggregate tourism demand with the rest of the determinants can be
summarized as follows:
𝐴
∑ 𝐵
∑ 𝐶
∑ 𝐸
∑ 𝐹
∑
𝑎 𝑏 𝑐 𝑒 𝑓
𝑁𝐼𝐽𝑡 = 𝛼 0 + 𝛼 𝑎 𝑋𝑂𝐷𝑇𝐼𝐽𝑡 + 𝛼 𝑏 𝑋𝑂𝐷𝐼𝐽 + 𝛼 𝑐 𝑋𝑂𝑇𝐼𝑡 + 𝛼 𝑒 𝑋𝐷𝑇𝐽𝑡 + 𝛼 𝑓 𝑋𝑂𝐼
𝑎=1 𝑏=1 𝑐=1 𝑒=1 𝑓=1
𝐺
∑ 𝐻
∑
𝑔
+ 𝛼 𝑔 𝑋𝐷𝐽 + 𝛼 ℎ 𝑋𝑇𝑡ℎ (1)
𝑔=1 ℎ=1
where
∙ 𝑁𝐼𝐽𝑡 = The aggregate demand of all residents from a particular origin I visiting a particular
destination J per unit of time t,
∙ 𝑋𝑂𝐷𝑇𝐼𝐽𝑡 𝑎
= Set of a determinant that depend on the bilateral origin-destination pair considered
and the time (for instance: visa agreements, trade agreements, currency unions, etc.)
∙ 𝑋𝑂𝐷𝐼𝐽 𝑏
= Set of b determinants that depend on the bilateral origin-destination pair considered
but that do not change over time (for instance: distance)
∙ 𝑋𝑂𝑇𝐼𝑡 𝑐
= Set of c determinants that depend on origin and time (for instance: GDP in the origin
location)
∙ 𝑋𝐷𝑇𝐽𝑡 𝑒
= Set of e determinants that depend on destination and time (for instance: GDP in the
destination location, hosting a large event, terrorist attacks, etc.)
∙ 𝑋𝑂𝐼𝑓 = Set of f determinants that depend on origin but that do not change over time (for
instance: country size, religion, etc.)
∙ 𝑋𝐷𝐽𝑔 = Set of g determinants that depend on destination but that do not change over time (for
instance: coastline length)
∙ 𝑋𝑇𝑡ℎ = Set of h determinants that depend on time but not on a specific origin or destination
(for instance: global economic crisis).
It is possible to make the connection of this general expression with traditional demand models
using time series. Thus, on the one hand, when the data to be modelled are characterized by a
high number of temporal observations but a low number of origins and destinations (e.g., there
are observations over twenty years-or more-of tourist flows to a particular tourist destination from
some different origins), all those explanatory variables included in Equation 1 without the t sub-
index disappear and we get a reduced formula very similar to that used by Song et al. (2009) when
representing the aggregated demand function for tourism flows. On the other hand, when data
is referred to many origins and/or many destinations but only for one or few periods, literature
talks about gravity equation centering the attention on the effect of the different determinants in
the choice of destinations.
Although from Equation 1, it is possible to develop many of the empirical applications
attempted to be modelled by tourism demand under the framework of the gravity model at times,
some of the dimensions (I, J or t) are simply not considered and, consequently, the correspond-
ing parameters are assumed to be 0 (and determinants become part of the constant term). On
other occasions, due to the consideration of first differences or fixed effects, the modeling does
not enable certain parameters to be identified in favor of correctly identifying others. In any event,
the previous expression allows a very generic approach to the gravity equation to be established.
3 LITERATURE SELECTION AND DATA
3.1 Key literature selection
In order to identify gravity model specifications on tourism, we conducted a broad-scale search

of various databases including Scopus, Hospitality & Tourism Complete (Ebscohost), Web of
Science and Google Scholar. We completed the initial screening searching for relevant ref-
erences from published articles and academic books. The selected papers were published
from the 1960s to September 2020, beginning with the earliest studies by Pyers (1966) and
Quandt and Baumol (1966; 1969). However, due to the large body of studies initially identified,
we undertook a selection procedure to find the most significant.
First, non-tourism studies were excluded. This was not an easy task as the frontier between
tourism and non-tourism flows is unclear at times, especially for domestic and urban trips. Sec-
ond, the articles were assessed in terms of their relevance and journal prestige, according to Jour-
nal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics) and the SCImago Journal Rank, as well as their novelty
in introducing a new variable or a new estimation technique. Finally, a total set of 143 studies
published in various discipline-focused journals was selected (See Table A1 in the Appendix).
As expected, the most important journals on the tourism and hospitality category of research,
included Tourism Management, Tourism Economics, Journal of Travel Research and Annals of
Tourism Research, have published papers that apply gravity model for tourism. In addition, certain
economics and regional studies journals, as well as several transport journals, have also published
relevant studies in the context of tourism and they are considered in our analysis.
3.2 Dependent variable
From a theoretical standpoint, the dependent variable in a tourism demand model should repre-
sent the quantity of the product demanded (Crouch, 1994). Nevertheless, from a practical view-
point, tourism is not a conventional variable which represents a quantity but is measured by aggre-
gating different activities in monetary terms. Hence, the issue of a pertinent measure of tourism
demand is problematic and controversial because tourism demand represents both an amount of
expenditure and quality of consumption (Rosselló & He, 2019; Smeral, 1988). In the context of the
gravity model, we found that most papers analyzed the number of tourists or trips as the measure
of demand, with only very few exceptions using monetary measures such as tourism receipts (i.e.,
Petit & Seetaram, 2019) or aggregate bilateral monetary flows between different tourism-related
sectors (i.e., Mata & Llano-Verduras, 2012).
The main reason for the generalized use of tourist arrivals as proxy for tourism demand is data
availability. Estimating gravity models require frequently bilateral tourism flows and the main
source of data is the United Nation World Tourism Organization (UNWTO, 2021). This dataset
reports information on tourist arrivals for all countries in the world disaggregated by country of
origin since 1995. Most of the reviewed papers that estimate gravity specifications for multiple
destination countries use data compiled from this source. However, there are several drawbacks
of this data source that are difficult to overcome since it is difficult to find an alternative source
of data when the scope of the analysis includes multiple destinations. An important limitation is
that the UNWTO does not discriminate between missing values and zero tourism flows. Moreover,
data on tourism expenditure are only reported for each destination at aggregated level and without
distinguishing the origin country.
The analysis of the 143 selected papers showed how the use of international tourism flows (84%)
has dominated over domestic flows (18%). In particular, 23 of the revised papers use regional data,
mainly for Spain, Italy, United States and China. Another interesting question is the aggrega-
tion used for the dependent variable. In this instance, and as is expected from theoretical argu-
mentation, 88 studies (62%) used a bilateral variable considering a group of destination countries.
However, whether due to data availability, specific study objective and/or estimation method-
ology, we found that 55 papers (39%) used outbound or inbound aggregates from/to a specific
origin/destination, that is, total demand from a specific origin to all destinations/total demand
from all origins to a specific destination. Therefore, regarding the dependent variable used, the
TA B L E 2 Independent variables and use frequency

Indep variable Freq Indep variable Freq
GDP-O 126 (88%) OSOC 27 (19%)
DIST 122 (85%) FTA 26 (18%)
GDP-D 90 (62%) SEC 23 (16%)
POP-O 85 (59%) AIR 19 (13%)
CL 75 (52%) CURR 17 (12%)
PR 66 (46%) ECON 16 (11%)
BORDER 59 (41%) REL 15 (10%)
POP_D 52 (36%) MIG 14 (10%)
COL 42 (29%) VISA 14 (10%)
EX 41 (29%) CLIM 13 (9%)
GEOG 41 (29%) CUL 12 (8%)
POL 39 (27%) WHS 11 (8%)
TRADE 33 (23%) TC 10 (7%)
EVENT 31 (22%) ENV 7 (5%)
INF 31 (22%) TIME 3 (2%)
Note: Percentage over total number of papers. See Table A.2 for a description of the codes.
literature shows how gravity models are used more frequently in the context of modeling bilateral
international tourism flows.
Despite the structural background of the gravity model, analysis of different periods prevailed
over a simple static period in the case of international tourism flows. Specifically, 22 papers (15%)
only consider one period for the empirical analysis and 14 out of 22 of these papers look at domestic
tourism. In general, this aspect might indicate lower data availability for domestic tourism series
for a specific period.
3.3 Independent variables
Table 2 presents a summary and usage frequency of the determining factors for tourism demand
looked at in the reviewed articles. It should be noted how, given the impossibility of presenting
each and every one of the variables, a first aggregation is offered which could have gone further.
Thus, for example, the distance variable (DIST) could be grouped with geographic distance and
travel distance, since these two variables likely pursue the same concept.
As expected, and according to the simplest version of the gravity model, distance—in terms of
geographic and travel distance (DIST)—or travel cost (TC) and proxies of economic size—in terms
of income (GDP) or population (POP)—are the most frequent independent variables included in
this specification. Distance is included in 88% of the papers whilst travel costs are less frequent
and only considered in 7%. Here it is important to mention that the economic size of the origin
country, measured in terms of income level (GDP-O) and population (POP-O), is more frequent
(88% and 59%, respectively) than the same variables for the destination country (62% and 36%,
respectively).
The concept of prices is also frequently considered in gravity estimations. Thus, price (PR)
and exchange rate (EX) variables are included in 46% and 29% of the articles, respectively. In
general, these variables are expressed in terms of the prices/currency of the destination in terms
of prices/currency of the origin or a country of reference. However, other economic variables that
measure the intensity of economic relations are less frequent. This is the true for trade variables
(TRADE) in 23% of the papers; belonging to trade agreements (FTA) in 18%; sharing a common
currency (CURR) in 12%; visa agreements (VISA) in 10%, or other economic-related variables
(ECON) in 11% of the articles.
Geographical variables related to accessibility to the tourist destination are also commonly
included in this type of specification, such as common borders (BORDER) in 41% of the papers or
other geographical variables (GEOG) in 29%. However, another geographical variable such as time
zones (TIME) is less frequent, since only three of the articles (2%) reviewed include this variable.
Other variables related to the concept of accessibility are infrastructures (INF), including trans-
port infrastructures or air connectivity (AIR), which are present in 22% and 13% of the papers,
respectively. Regarding environmental (ENV) and climate (CLIM) variables, these are looked at
in 5% and 9% of the selected studies, respectively.
Traditional cultural variables such as common language (CL, 52%) or colonial ties (COL, 29%)
are also frequently included in gravity models. Other culture-related variables are gaining pres-
ence in this type of specification, such as World Heritage Sites (WHS, 9%), cultural affinity or
values (CUL, 8%), migration (MIG, 10%), religion (REL, 10%) and other sociological and cultural
variables (OSOC, 19%). Finally, variables related to politics and institutional quality (POL) are
becoming frequent in gravity models for tourism demand (27%), with the same being true for
security threats (SEC) such as terrorist attacks (16%), or other special events (EVENT) that might
affect tourism, such as the Olympics, SARS, or crises (22%).
Depending on the main topic of research, certain controls can be absorbed by the set of fixed
effects included in the specification. For instance, when the gravity model is applied to a country-
specific case study, the variables that measure economic size are not considered or they are just
absorbed by the fixed effects. For instance, when the gravity model is applied to explain tourist
arrivals to a particular destination from multiple origins, the income level (GDP-D) or popula-
tion (POP-D) of the destination are frequently removed from the specification. Moreover, when
multilateral resistances to tourism, in the form of origin-year (OY) and/or destination-year (DY)
𝑐 𝑒
fixed effect, are considered, time-varying country-specific characteristics (𝑋𝑂𝑇𝐼𝑡 ; 𝑋𝐷𝑇𝐽𝑡 ) such as
economic size (GDP-D, GDP-O, POP-D, POP-O), relative prices (PR) and exchange rates (EX)
are being absorbed by this set of fixed effects. Indeed, controlling for multilateral resistances,
as explained in the following section, is particularly relevant when the variable of interest is
𝑎
time-varying at pair level (𝑋𝑂𝐷𝑇𝐼𝐽𝑡 ) such as visa restrictions (Artal-Tur et al., 2016; Czaika &
Neumayer, 2020), common currency and trade agreements (Saayman et al., 2016; Santana-Gallego
et al., 2016), or migration stock (Santana-Gallego & Paniagua, 2022).
𝑐 𝑒
Furthermore, if the variable of interest is time-varying country-specific (𝑋𝑂𝑇𝐼𝑡 ; 𝑋𝐷𝑇𝐽𝑡 ) such as
security threats (Fourie et al., 2020; Groizard et al., 2021), natural disasters (Rosselló et al., 2020),
income level (Waqas et al., 2021), or institutional quality (Balli et al., 2020), gravity model can
be estimated by applying Panel-FE or PPML with pair FE. However, the inclusion of pair fixed
𝑓 𝑔
effects absorbs any time invariant destination and origin fixed determinants (𝑋𝑂𝐼 ; 𝑋𝐷𝐽 ) such as
average annual temperature, number of beaches or km of coastline as well as traditional variables
𝑏
in gravity equations which are fixed at country level (𝑋𝑂𝐷𝐼𝐽 ) such as common language, com-
mon religion, common colonial background, or distance. Therefore, time invariant determinants
do not need to be included in the tourism specification since pair-fixed effects control for any
unobservable bilateral resistances to tourism. Indeed, Egger and Nigai (2015) and Agnosteva et al.
(2014) show that the pair-fixed effects are a better measure of bilateral trade/travel costs than the
standard set of time-invariant gravity variables.
3.4 Geographical context and main research topics
Two further interesting aspects to study are the geographical context and the main objective of the
research. About the geographical context, two main groups can be characterized. Around half of
the papers (77 papers, 54%) explore tourism determinants for a group of countries, whilst the other
half (66 papers) use a single country as a case study. Thus, papers that consider a group of countries
mainly use databases that include bilateral tourism for a large number of countries worldwide
(38 papers). Additionally, developed countries such as OECD (six papers) and European countries
(five papers) attract more attention in tourism economics literature. This may be explained due to
data availability, since the quality of data or its mere availability is frequently larger for developed
countries.
In terms of country-specific studies, China (11 out of 77 papers) and the United States (10 out
of 77) are the most common countries used as case studies. On the one hand, American scholars
were the first to publish papers using gravity models and they used data for the United States
(Long, 1970; Quandt & Baumol, 1966; Quandt & Young, 1969). On the other, Chinese scholars
have published very recent research on tourism demand using Chinese data (see for instance
Liou et al., 2020; D. Xu & Dong, 2020). Furthermore, important tourist destinations such as Italy
(seven papers), Spain (eight papers), and Turkey (six papers) are used as case studies to apply
gravity models to tourism demand.
In terms of the main variable of interest, the most frequent topic of research is, on the one
hand, a characterization of general determining factors for tourism demand, without focusing on
a specific variable (51 papers, 36%). This mainly occurs when the geographical context is a single
country. In other words, many authors are interested in exploring determining factors for tourism
for country case-study. On the other, many papers have shown interest in focusing on a certain spe-
cific research topic, highlighting transport and connectivity (seven papers, 5%), migration (nine
papers, 6.3%) cultural variables mainly related to religion, common language, or cultural values
(18 papers, 12.6%) and trade and visa policies (10 papers, 7%). More recently, and motivated by the
international context, some published papers have focused on security threats (10 papers, 7%),
mainly in terms of terrorist attacks (Fourie et al., 2020; Khalid, Okafor, & Aziz, 2020; Okafor &
Khalid, 2021) and security spending (Khalid, Okafor, & Aziz, 2020; Okafor, Tan, & Khalid, 2021).
With this categorization by research topic, we aim to provide a useful guide to reference most
influential papers that use gravity models in the tourism economic literature.
4 MODELING AND METHODOLOGY
4.1 Structural gravity model
Recent versions of structural gravity models require the inclusion of multilateral resistance terms
(MRT). As stated by Yotov et al. (2016), MRT translates the initial, partial equilibrium effects of
trade policy at bilateral level to country-specific effects on consumer and producer prices. In other
words, the MRT is the barrier to trade that each country faces with all its trading partners and not
including MRT would generate important biases in the estimate as emphasized by Baldwin and
Taglioni (2006). The common method to control for unobserved MRT is to include inward and
outward (origin/destination) fixed effects in the gravity model.
In terms of tourism, Harb and Bassil (2020a) justify the introduction of MRT on tourism
demand models by stating that the decision of tourists to visit a certain destination also depends on
the characteristics of possible alternative destinations and remoteness. Santana-Gallego and Pani-
agua (2022) hold that failing to account for MRT would predict the same tourism flows between
two island regions in the Mediterranean Sea, surrounded by multiple alternative destinations, as
for these two regions if they were located in the Pacific Ocean, far away from other regions.
Based on previous research on Armington (1969) CES-utility functions, Yotov et al. (2016) define
a structural gravity system as:
( )1−𝜎
𝑌𝑖 𝐸𝑗 𝑡𝑖𝑗
𝑋𝑖𝑗 =
𝑌 Π𝑖 𝑃𝑗
𝑌𝑖 𝐸𝑗
Where 𝑋𝑖𝑗 is exports from exporter 𝑖 to importer 𝑗; is the hypothetical level of friction-
𝑌
𝑡𝑖𝑗
less trade between trading partners if there were no trade costs while would be total effects
Π𝑖 𝑃𝑗
of trade costs that consist of three components: (i) 𝑡𝑖𝑗 which is bilateral trade costs commonly
approximated in the literature by geographical variables such as distance, land border, tariff or
trade agreements, (ii) Π𝑖 is outward multilateral resistances which measure exporters’ ease to
market access, and (iii) 𝑃𝑗 is inward multilateral resistances which measure importers’ ease to
market access as defined by Anderson and van Wincoop (2003). Santana-Gallego and Paniagua
(2022), modified the model by Anderson (2011) and obtained a similar structural gravity model for
bilateral tourism. However, the papers that introduce MRT are scarce, and it seems that applica-
tions of gravity models for tourism demand go a step behind the advances on the theoretical and
empirical applications for trade, or even migration.
Yotov et al. (2016) provide a review of best practices to estimate structural gravity models such
as the use of panel data and including time-varying importer and exporter fixed effects, as proxies
for MRT, as well as pair fixed effects, to account for endogeneity of trade policies and to control for
bilateral fixed trade costs. Moreover, these authors recommend estimating the model by Poisson
Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimator to account for heteroscedasticity, to deal with
zero trade flows and to ensure that the gravity fixed effects are equal to their corresponding struc-
tural terms. Finally, they also recommend including intra-national (domestic) trade to ensure the
consistency of the gravity theory, to solve the ‘distance-puzzle’ and to be able to estimate non-
discriminatory trade policies, among other reasons. All these recommendations can also be fol-
lowed when a gravity model for tourism is estimated. However, as would be explained further,
empirical applications of gravity models for tourism demand fail to address most of these direc-
tions. Consequently, there is still room to improve the empirical applications of gravity models for
tourism.
4.2 Econometric methods
Table 3 presents the main estimation procedures and use frequency. Initial empirical exercises try-
ing to identify the parameters of a gravity equation used simple linear regressions (Other Linear
Regression), since the consideration of single countries and one simple period greatly simplified
TA B L E 3 Econometric method a use frequency

Method Freq Method Freq
OLS 74 (52%) Other linear regression 9 (6%)
Panel RE 29 (20%) CCE and FMOLS 6 (4%)
Panel FE 29 (20%) Spatial models 6 (4%)
PPML 25 (17%) GLS and FGLS 4 (3%)
Dynamic Panel (GMM) 20 (14%) Hausman–Taylor 4 (3%)
2SLS and IV 9 (6%) Quantile 3 (2%)
Note: Papers can apply more than one estimation procedure.
estimation problems (Crampon & Tan, 1973; Malamud, 1973; Smith & Brown, 1981; Quandt &
Young, 1969). However, given that most of the papers explored tourism flows for different time
periods, panel data techniques are required as they analyze the determinants of total or bilateral
tourism flows from/to different countries/regions during different years. This dynamic framework
not only enables to capture relevant relationships over time, but also avoids the risk of selecting
an unrepresentative year. Moreover, panels allow to control for unobservable individual charac-
teristics between partners. Therefore, most of the reviewed papers on gravity models applied to
tourism flows use the panel gravity model framework.
About the applied econometric method to estimate the gravity model, a large number of arti-
cles (52%) used Pooled Ordinary Least Squares (OLS). This method is the simplest technique to
estimate linear regression using panel data. OLS stack observations for each individual over time,
so differences across individuals are not considered. Consequently, the method can be biased and
inconsistent if fixed effects are not included and heterogeneity related to time and country-specific
effects are ignored (see Baldwin & Taglioni, 2006 and Yotov et al., 2016 for a discussion on the
main econometric issues related to estimating gravity models). However, thanks to their simplic-
ity, OLS estimation techniques are frequently combined with the inclusion of fixed effects, and it
is presented as a benchmark for other specifications.
If bilateral tourism data are used, the most frequent set of included fixed effects are origin
(40%), destination (33%) and year fixed (45%) or dyads (17%), and in most of them combined with
year fixed effects. This set of fixed effects controls for time-invariant origin and destination or
country-pair characteristics, as well as time-variant common factors. Additionally, MRT, in the
form of origin-year (7%) and destination-year (5.6%) fixed effects, are less frequent although they
are required to estimate structural gravity models.
When the OLS estimation method is combined with dyadic fixed effects for bilateral data, or
with origin fixed effects for total tourist arrivals, this specification is equivalent to estimating the
gravity model by the Panel Fixed Effects (Panel-FE) technique. This method is applied in 20% of the
reviewed papers whilst Panel Random Effects (Panel-RE) are considered in 20%. Panel-RE is fre-
quently presented alongside Panel-FE estimates and the Hausman test is applied to discriminate
between them. In general, the Hausman test shows that the preferred specification to estimate
the gravity model for tourism demand is Panel-FE, which is consistent with the theoretical model
developed by Anderson and van Wincoop (2003). However, a drawback to the Panel-FE model is
that time-invariant origin/destination or country-pair characteristics cannot be estimated. There-
fore, if the variables of interest in the paper are fixed, Panel-RE or Hausman and Taylor procedures
are the methodology commonly used.
It is relevant to mention that estimating gravity model in a panel data context requires to exam-
ine whether the variables are stationary or not. Therefore, preliminary unit root tests are necessary
to apply appropriate methods that avoid spurious regressions. However, most of the revised papers
fail to account for this diagnostic test since they assume stationary dependent and independent
variables to estimate gravity models. This is not necessary true because variables such as tourism
flows and GDP are likely to be I(1), and so their long-run relationship needs to be addressed by
using alternative methods of panel cointegration estimation such as fully modified OLS (FMOLS)
or dynamic OLS (DOLS) as proposed by Pedroni (1996, 1999, 2001) and Kao and Chiang (2000),
respectively. For instance, Seetanah et al. (2010) and Ulucak et al. (2020) found evidence of
non-stationarity and they apply FMOLS procedure to estimate gravity models for tourism. How-
ever, Fidrmuc (2009), for the case of international trade, proves that DOLS and FMOLS procedures
yield similar estimates than FE models and that estimates including FE are superior to dynamic
specifications of gravity models used to address the trade persistence (Bun & Klaassen, 2002).
Alternatively, other authors such as Harb and Bassil (2020a), Ulucak et al. (2020) or Ghosh
(2021) apply common correlated effects (CCE) methodology, which deals with cross-sectional
dependence unlike the DOLS and the FMOLS procedures, and the estimate parameters are found
to be similar to those estimates with FE. Therefore, although most of the revised papers do not
apply integration and cointegration analyses, it seems that the possible bias due to the non-
stationarity of gravity models is rather small since fixed effects models are predominantly used in
the recent literature for tourism demand, and spurious correlation problem could be less impor-
tant in panels with larger number of individuals (N) than periods (T) as suggested by Fidrmuc
(2009) and Bun and Klaassen (2002).
More recently, the Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood estimator (PPML) proposed by Santos-
Silva and Tenreyro (2006, 2010) has been applied, since it overcomes known biases when esti-
mating gravity equations by OLS, namely the existence of heteroscedastic residuals and zeros in
the dependent variable (although, due to data availability, zero tourism flows are less frequent
in tourism data than in trade data). This is because the UNWTO, the main source for collecting
tourism data, does reports zero tourism flows and it is not straightforward to discriminate between
zeros and not reported. Indeed, this database does not differentiate between zeros or missing val-
ues because for some specific years/country-pairs it reports missing data but for some other it just
aggregates arrivals from specific regions.
Saayman et al. (2016), Khalid, Okafor, and Burzynska (2021), or Okafor, Tan, and Khalid (2021)
deal with this issue by assuming that the UNWTO does not record tourism flows below a specific
threshold, and so they consider data to be zero or close to zero for small tourism flows. However,
this strategy could not provide efficient estimates because aggregations in “other countries” are
not negligible in certain cases and the specific threshold for not reporting tourism flows is not
the same for all destination countries. As proposed by Neumayer and Plümper (2016) or Santana-
Gallego and Paniagua (2022), an alternative is to apply the PPML estimator for positive tourism
flows (intensive margin of tourism) without log-linearization of the dependent variable since the
procedure is still robust to different patterns of heteroskedasticity. In any case, identifying possible
zeros in tourism data and exploring the determinants of extensive margins of tourism (selection
of tourist destination) remain as a challenge for future research.
The PPML procedure is becoming the preferred estimation method as it also allows to flexibly
account for multilateral resistance. As previously discussed, the new gold standard in gravity mod-
els is a gravity equation that includes structural forces or high-dimensional fixed effects to capture
MRT (Anderson & Yotov, 2012). Harb and Bassil (2020a) discussed that bilateral tourism flows not
only depend on factors that determine the tourist attractiveness of the destination country, but
also depend on how attractive alternative destinations are. This effect can be termed “multilateral
resistance to tourism” and can be controlled for by including source-year and destination-year
fixed effects (Neumayer & Plümper, 2016). However, although PPML is the recommended esti-
mator procedure to estimate gravity equations, this method is only applied in 17% of the reviewed
papers and most of the papers fail to include MRT, as in Khalid, Okafor, and Burzynska (2021),
Khalid, Okafor, and Sanusi (2021) or Okafor, Tan, and Khalid (2021).
To explore the dynamic nature of the data, 14% of the reviewed papers that estimate gravity
models in a dynamic panel data framework apply the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM).
This method deals with some econometric problems such as endogeneity, measurement error and
weak instruments. Moreover, it addresses repetition and loyalty in tourism flows and controls for
time-invariant country-specific determinants such as distance or common border. If endogene-
ity is a problem, instrumental variable techniques are applied. Indeed, Two Stage Least Square
(2SLS) and other regressions that use Instrumental Variables (IV) are applied in 6% of the articles.
Finally, there are alternative methodologies that have also been applied to estimate gravity mod-
els such as Quantile regressions, Generalized Least Squares (GLS) or Negative Binomial, although
their presence is much lower than the aforementioned methods.
To sum up, regarding methods and models we can conclude that most of the empirical appli-
cations of gravity models for bilateral tourism neither define a structural gravity specification
with MRT nor use the PPML estimator procedure. What is more, none of the reviewed papers
consider domestic tourism jointly with international tourism as recommended by Yotov et al.
(2016). This issue is crucial not only to estimate a theoretically consistent gravity model but also
including domestic tourism helps to identify parameters, such as political instability or terrorism,
that cannot be estimated with international tourism flows alone. As far as we are concern, up to
the date, none of the published papers that applied gravity models for tourism demand jointly
considered intra and international tourism flows. Therefore, this can be an important challenge
to be addressed for future empirical studies that aim to estimate structural gravity models for
tourism.
5 REVIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE
5.1 Expected impact of economic size and distance
Gravity model for tourism demand predicts that tourism flows between two regions/countries
depend on the economic size (measured in terms of GDP or GDPpc) and travel costs (mainly mea-
sured in terms of distance). As presented in Section 3.3., these are the most frequent explanatory
variables included in the specifications. Table 4 presents a summary of the sign and significance
of main estimate elasticities while Table A.3 in the appendix presents the estimate elasticities for
these standard variables. In most of the papers, the empirical findings are consistent with the
general framework of the gravity model.
The economic size of the origin and destination region is traditionally measured in terms of
GDP, GDP per capita and/or population. In general, the estimate parameters for population of
the origin (POP-O) and destination (POP-D) are significantly positive (94% and 85%, respectively),
being mostly non-significant when negative and the estimated magnitude is usually larger for the
origin country. Regarding the income level measured in terms of GDP, it is always positive for
the origin country (GDP-O) while in most of the cases it is estimated to be significantly positive
(83.3%) for the destination region (GDP-D).
However, it is more frequent to find that the income level of the regions is measured in terms
of GDPpc, and commonly combined with the inclusion of population into the specification. As
TA B L E 4 Main estimate elasticities

Variable Estimates Significant effect Positive effect Negative effect
Pop-O 73 64 60 4
POP-D 52 40 34 6
GDP-O 32 30 30 0
GDPpc-O 90 81 78 3
GDP-D 25 24 20 4
GDPpc-D 57 55 55 0
DIST 107 102 2 100
BORDER 53 45 43 2
PR 72 60 9 51
CL 58 52 50 2
COL 38 33 33 0
CUL 20 17 16 1
RTA 24 18 17 1
CURR 17 10 10 0
VISA 15 10 8 2
MIG 13 11 11 0
TRADE 33 28 28 0
SEC 29 20 3 17
POL 20 17 4 13
CLIM 12 11 11 0
Note: Estimates are taken for the preferred estimation method.
shown in Table A.3, the estimate income elasticity of the origin region (GDPpc-O) is mainly pos-
itive (normal good) but lower than 1 (66 out of 89 estimates, 74%). This result suggests that when
income elasticity is estimated by using a gravity model, tourism is not a luxury good, and it con-
trasts with previous findings of the tourism demand literature. In the context of tourism demand
modeling mainly using time series analysis, Crouch (1992) reviewed 44 published from 1960 to
1990 and he obtained that about 63% of the estimates are income elastic (elasticity exceeds unity)
which implies that most international tourism is considered luxury. More recently, W. Song et al.
(2010) reviewed 17 studies from 2000 to 2009 and, in general, the income elasticities of interna-
tional tourism demand are often greater than one, thus indicating again that tourism is luxury.
Interestingly, seven out of the 17 papers that obtained income elasticities higher than 1 use domes-
tic tourism and regional data (Alvarez-Diaz et al., 2017; Massidda & Etzo, 2012; Muñoz et al., 2021;
Voltes-Dorta et al., 2016; among others). Regarding the income level of the destination (GDPpc-D),
in general the estimate parameter is significantly positive but lower than unity in 36 out of 53 esti-
mates (67%). This empirical evidence points to a positive relationship between development level
of the destination and inbound tourism, and it is in line with Waqas (2021) that found that low-
and high-income countries tend to have low-income elasticity while medium income countries
are the most income elastic.
Finally, regarding the DIST, it is mostly found to be significantly negative (100 out of 107 esti-
mates). Moreover, it deserves attention the fact that the magnitude of the distance’s effect has
remain relatively high and stable over time, being the mean and median estimated values −1.0 and
−0.83, respectively. Indeed, it seems that the estimate parameter of the distance effect is becoming
larger (more negative) for samples that include more recent periods. This result is consistent with
the distance puzzle as found in the trade literature. That is, empirical evidence for the gravity lit-
erature of international trade fails to deliver empirical support for globalization and diminishing
effects of distance on trade (Disdier & Head, 2008; Yotov, 2012). Solving the missing globalization
puzzle remains as a challenge for tourism research.
5.2 Other explanatory variables
Estimated elasticities of other determining variables are also analyzed as summarized in Table 4.
Therefore, similar to traditional demand modeling, relative prices (PR) are frequently considered
in gravity specifications and their estimates present the expected negative sign (85% of the signifi-
cant cases) when the price variable is expressed as prices at destination relative to prices at origin.
This result indicates that price competitiveness is a relevant factor to explain tourism demand
since the general level of prices at destination is considered by travelers when making travel
decisions.
Dyadic factors that influence bilateral tourism flows are frequently added to gravity models too.
These factors can be time invariant such as common border, language or colonial background
and they mainly exert a significantly positive impact on tourism movements because they imply
lower bilateral barriers. In particularly, these dummy variables are mostly significant, and they
present a positive effect for sharing a common border in 43 out of 45 estimates (95.6% of significant
estimates), in 50 out of 52 estimates (96.2%) for sharing a common language and all cases (33
estimates) for sharing a colonial relationship. Other variables that are fixed (or quasi-fixed) at pair
level are associated with cultural similarity, commonly measured in terms of religious affinity or
similar cultural values, and they are also found to be significantly positive in 16 out of 17 significant
estimates (94%).
Dyadic factors can also be time varying, so reducing/removing these barriers are expected to
have a positive effect on tourism flows. Just to mention some of them, sharing a common currency
is found to have a positive effect in tourism for all significant cases (but the variable is significant in
10 out of 17 estimates), belonging to a common trade agreement/block has a significantly positive
effect in 94.4% of the significant cases (being significant in 18 out of 24 cases) while visa facilitation
has a positive effect in 80% of the significant cases (significant in 10 out of 15 cases). Therefore, all
these bilateral agreements between countries/regions imply lower barriers and higher intensity
of the economic relations between them. Moreover, two additional time-varying characteristics
between countries/regions are migration and trade flows. Migration is found to be significant in
11 out of 13 estimates with a positive impact in all cases while trade (total trade or trade openness)
is found to be significantly positive in 28 out of 33 cases. These two variables not only measure
the intensity of the economic relationship between country/regions but also can be a proxy of
network effects.
Finally, gravity models for tourism incorporate country-specific factors mainly associated to
the destination country/region. Security and political stability at the destination country are the
most frequent. In particular, security threats (mainly terrorism and crime rate) have a negative
effect in 85% of the cases (being significant in 20 out of 29 cases), while political instability has
the expected negative effect in 76.4% of the cases (being significant in 17 out of 20 estimates).
Additionally, climate conditions at the destination are significant cases, climate at destination
(mainly measured in terms of average temperature) if fixed effects are not incorporated to the
specification. In
6 CONCLUDING REMARKS
Tourism demand modeling has evolved over the last six decades. In the drive to achieve
more in-depth knowledge about tourism choice determinants, the literature has tested different
frameworks and methods. Due to the perishable nature of tourism, the main interest in model-
ing tourism demand had been linked to forecasting and consequently to the use of time series
and the analysis of their dynamics (W. Song et al., 2019). However, gravity models that had been
popular in the early days of tourism demand modeling in the 1960s and 70s, but had disappeared
over the following two decades, have reappeared as a modeling alternative to time series models,
focusing on the structural factors explaining the distribution of tourist flows between countries
or regions. When compared to tourism demand exercises using time series, where the determin-
ing variables basically used income and prices or exchange rates, gravity models are much more
diverse in terms of determining factors when evaluating tourism demand.
After reviewing 143 key studies on gravity models for tourism, this survey summarizes the gen-
eral findings about determining factors, geographical contexts and econometric estimation strate-
gies used in the literature. The analysis carried out has shown how the gravity equation has been
raised, generally and in accordance with its more general theoretical approach, in contexts where
it was intended to measure and analyze bilateral tourist movements within a group of countries or
regions. This could be an additional reason that could explain the renewed interest in the gravity
framework by tourism demand modelers. However, it should be admitted that studies that focus
on a single destination and even origin are not insignificant. The literature review has also shown
how income and travel costs (represented mainly as distance) are the most determining variables
used. But using the gravity equation there are a multitude of possible determinants that become
statistically significant in destination choice by international tourists. Whatever the case, future
research should try to show, beyond statistical significance, the relative importance of each one
in relation to the rest of the determining factors.
The increase in cross-border employment, globalization and changes in environmental sus-
tainability have all made tourism decision-making a more complex process, especially in terms
of international travel choice. As users of aggregate data, gravity models in tourism may cause
model misspecifications in depicting the tourism decision-making process. However, their use-
fulness in detecting general determining factors at country- (or regional-) level can help define
national development policies and put forward future scenarios required for long-run tourism
planning—a key issue for the tourism industry that seems to have been rediscovered in the liter-
ature on modeling tourism demand, as evidenced by this review.
In reference to the model specification and econometric method used to estimate the gravity
equation, we review the most applied techniques. As discussed in previous section, it is relevant
to highlight how the empirical applications of gravity models for tourism do not follow most of
the recommendations to estimate gravity models as proposed by Yotov et al. (2016). Although
considerable efforts have been made by researchers to improve estimation efficiency and to solve
common problems associated with data structure, most of the papers fail to define structural grav-
ity equations with MRT or to apply the PPML estimation procedure. To that respect, it seems that
gravity models for tourism are a step behind to empirical applications for trade. Moreover, it is
worth to mention that none of the reviewed papers are including both domestic tourism (jointly
with international tourism) in the dependent variable. How to measure domestic tourism in a
panel data context with multiple destinations would be a relevant challenge for researchers that
aim to apply structural gravity models to tourism demand.
This review of the developments in gravity equations for tourism over the past six decades serves
as a reference for empirical applications of this specification as well as suggests beneficial direc-
tions for future research. Therefore, this paper provides a useful guide for other researchers inter-
ested in developing gravity equations for tourism. However, the subjectivity related to the selection
of our collection of 143 key papers may be seen as a limitation of this study.
AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S
We are grateful to Editor and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments and
suggestions. This study was financially supported by Agencia Estatal de Investigacion (AEI)
del Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MCIN) through grant PID2019-106738GB-I00/AEI/
10.13039/501100011033.
D A T A AVA I L A B I L I T Y S T A T E M E N T
n/a.
REFERENCES
Acheampong, R. A., & Silva, E. A. (2015). Land use-transport interaction modeling: A review of the literature and
future research directions. Journal of Transport and Land Use, 8, 11–38.
Adeola, O., & Evans, O. (2019). Digital tourism: Mobile phones, internet and tourism in Africa. Tourism Recreation
Research, 44(2), 190–202.
Adeola, O., & Evans, O. (2020). ICT, infrastructure, and tourism development in Africa. Tourism Economics, 26(1),
97–114.
Akter, H., Akhtar, S., & Ali, S. (2017). Tourism demand in Bangladesh: Gravity model analysis. Tourism, 65(3),
346–360.
Altaf, N. (2021). Modelling the international tourist arrivals in India. Tourism Planning and Development, 18(6),
699–708
Alvarez-Diaz, M., D’Hombre, B., & Ghisetti, C. (2017). Modelling inter- and intra-regional tourism flows in Spain—
A spatial econometric approach. Reginal Statistics, 7(2), 3–35
Anderson, J. E. (1979). A theoretical foundation for the gravity equation. American Economic Review, 69, 106–16
Anderson, J. E. (2011). The gravity model. Annual Review of Economics, 3, 133–160.
Anderson, J. E., & Van Wincoop, E. (2001). Borders, Trade and welfare. NBER Working Paper No. 8515.
https://doi.org/10.3386/w8515
Anderson, J. E., & Van Wincoop, E. (2003). Gravity with gravitas: A solution to the border puzzle. American Eco-
nomic Review, 93(1), 170–192.
Anderson, J. E., & Yotov, Y. V. (2012). Gold standard gravity. Working Paper 17835,
Agnosteva, D., Anderson, J. E., & Yotov, Y. V. (2014). Intra-national trade costs: Measures and aggregation, National
Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Working Paper No. 19872.
Archibald, X., LaCorbinière, J., & Moore, W. (2008). Analysis of tourism competitiveness in the Caribbean: A gravity
model approach. Working Paper Central Bank of Barbados.
Arkolakis, C., Costinot, A., & Rodríguez-Clare, A. (2012). New trade models, same old gains? American Economic
Review, 102(1), 94–130.
Armington, P. S. (1969). A theory of demand for products distinguished by place of production. IMF Staff Papers,
16(1), 159–176.
Armstrong, C. W. G., (1972). ‘International tourism: Coming or going? The methodological problems of forecasting.’,
Futures, 4, 115–125.
Artal-Tur, A., Pallardó-López, V., & Requena-Silvente, F. (2016). Examining the impact of visa restrictions on inter-
national tourist flows using panel data. Estudios de Economía, 43(2), 265–279.
Baldwin, R. E., & Taglioni, D. (2006). Gravity for dummies and dummies for gravity equations (working paper No.
12516). National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
Balli, F.,Bally, H. O., & Cebeci, K. (2013). Impacts of exported Turkish soap operas and visa-free entry on inbound
tourism to Turkey. Tourism Management, 37, 186–192.
Balli, F., Bally, H. O., & Louis, R. J. (2018). The impacts of immigrants and institutions on bilateral tourism flows.
Tourism Management, 52, 221–229
Balli, F., Bally, H. O., Karimova, A., & Louis, R. J. (2016). Gulf cooperation council outbound tourism: The role of
expatriates. Tourism Analysis, 23, 433–437
Balli, F., Ghassan, H. B., & Jeefri, E. H. (2020). Towards understanding GCC outbound International Tourism.
Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events, 12(2), 143–151
Bergstrand, J. H. (1985). The gravity equation in international trade: Some microeconomic foundations and empir-
ical evidence. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 67(3), 474–481.
Bergstrand, J. H. (1989). The generalized gravity equation, monopolistic competition, and the factor-proportions
theory in international trade. Review of Economics and Statistics, 71, 143–153
Breda, E., & Oddo, G., (2019). The determinants of foreign tourism demand: Separating elasticities for the extensive
and the intensive margin, No 482, Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers), Bank of Italy, Economic
Research and International Relations Area.
Brida, J. G., & Scuderi, R. (2013). Determinants of tourist expenditure: A review of microeconometric models.
Tourism Management Perspectives, 6, 28–40
Bun, M., & Klaassen, F. (2002). The importance of dynamics in panel gravity models of trade. Tinbergen Institute
Discussion Paper, No. 02–108/2
Carey, H. C. (1877). Principles of social science. J.B. Lippincott & Co.
Cevik, S. (2021). Going viral: A gravity model of infectious diseases and tourism flows. Open Economies Review,
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11079-021-09619-5
Chasapopoulos, P., den Butter, F. A. G., & Mihaylov, E. (2014). Demand for tourism in Greece: A panel data analysis
using the gravity model. International Journal of Tourism Policy, 5(3), 173–191.
Cheung, Y. H., & Saha, S. (2015). Exploring the nexus between tourism demand and cultural similarity. Tourism
Analysis, 20, 229–241.
Chow, C. K., & Tsui, W. H. (2019). Cross-border tourism: Case study of inbound Russian visitor arrivals to China.
International Journal of Tourism Research, 21, 693–711.
Colwell, P. F. (1982). Central place theory and the simple economic foundations of the gravity model. Journal of
Regional Science, 22(4), 541–546.
Costinot, A., & Rodríguez-Clare, A. (2014). Trade theory with numbers: Quantifying the consequences of glob-
alization. Chap. 4 in Handbook of International Economics, vol. 4, edited by G. Gopinath , E. Helpman, & K.
Rogoff
Crampon, L. J., & Tan, K. T. (1973). A model of tourism flow into the Pacific’. The Tourist Review, 28(3), 98–104.
Cró, S., Correia, P., & Martins, A. M. (2021). The role of promotion expenditures, direct flights and climate in island
destinations. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 28(1), 64-81 https://doi.org/10.1177/13567667211020492
Crouch, G. I. (1992). Effect of income and price on International tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 19(4), 643–664
Crouch, G. I. (1994). The study of international tourism demand: A survey of practice. Journal of Travel Research,
32(4), 41–55.
Culiuc, A. (2014). Determinants of International Tourism. IMF Working Paper (WP14/82). https://www.imf.org/
external/pubs/ft/wp/2014/wp1482.pdf
Czaika, M., & Neumayer, E. (2020). On the negative impact of time zone differences on international tourism.
Current Issues in Tourism, 23(10),. 1181–1185.
De Mello, M., Pack, A., & Sinclair, T. H. (2001) A system of equations of UK tourism demand in neighbouring
countries. Applied Economics, 34, 509–21.
De Vita, G. (2014) The long-run impact of exchange rate regimes on international tourism flows. Tourism Manage-
ment, 45, 226–233
Deardorff, A. (1998). Determinants of bilateral trade: Does gravity work in a neoclassical world? In The Regional-
ization of the World Economy, (Ed. J. A. Frankel )University of Chicago Press (pp. 7–32)
Deluna, R., & Jeon, N. (2014). Determinants of International Tourism Demand for the Philippines: An Augmented
Gravity Model Approach. MPRA Paper No. 55294.
Disdier, A. C., & Head, K. (2008). The puzzling persistence of the distance effect on bilateral trade. The Review of
Economics and Statistics, 90(1), 37–48.
Dropsy, V., Montet, C., & Poirine, B. (2020). Tourism, insularity, andremoteness: A gravity-based approach. Tourism
Economics, 26(5), 792–808.
Durbarry, R. (2008) Tourism taxes: Implications for tourism demand in the UK. Review of Development Economics,
12(1), 21–36, 2008
Durbarry, R., & Sinclair, T. M. (2003). Market shares analysis of french tourism demand. Annals of Tourism
Research, 30, 927–941.
Egger, P., & Nigai, S., (2015). Structural gravity with dummies only: Constrained ANOVA-type estimation of gravity
models. Journal of International Economics, 97(1), 86–99.
Eric, T. N., Semeyutin, A., & Hubbard, N. (2020). Effects of enhanced air connectivity on the Kenyan tourism
industry and their likely welfare implications. Tourism Management, 78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2019.
104033
Eryigit, M., Kotil, E., & Eryigit, R. (2010). Factors affecting international tourism flows to Turkey: A gravity model
approach. Tourism Economics, 16(3), 585–595.
Fotheringham, A. S. (1983). A new set of spatial-interaction models: The theory of competing destinations. Envi-
ronment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 15(1), 15–36.
Fourie, J., Rosselló, J., & Santana-Gallego, M. (2015). Religion, religious diversity and tourism. Kyklos, 68(1), 51–64
Fourie, J., Rosselló, J., & Santana-Gallego, M. (2016). Research note: Which god is good for tourism? Tourism Eco-
nomics, 22(1), 163–169
Fourie, J., Rosselló-Nadal, J., & Santana-Gallego, M. (2020). Fatal attraction: How security threats hurt tourism.
Journal of Travel Research, 59(2), 209–219.
Fourie, J., & Santana-Gallego, M. (2011). The impact of mega-sport events on tourist arrivals. Tourism Management,
32(6), 1364–1370
Fourie, J., & Santana-Gallego, M. (2013a). Ethnic reunion and cultural affinity. Tourism Management, 36, pp. 411–
420
Fourie, J., & Santana-Gallego, M. (2013b). The determinants of African tourism. Development Southern Africa, 30(3),
2347–2366
Fourie, J., & Santana-Gallego, M. (2017). The invisible hand of Thierry Henry: How World Cup qualification influ-
ences host country tourist arrivals. Journal of Sports Economics, 18(7), 750–766.
Fidrmuc, J. (2009). Gravity models in integrated panels. Empirical Economics, 37, 435–446
Galli, P., Fraga, C., & Sequeiras-Santos, M. P. (2016). Gravitational force exerted by Brazilian tourist destinations on
foreign air travelers. Journal of Air Transport Management, 55(C), 76–83.
Gani, A., & Clemes, M. D. (2021). Business environment effect on business visitor arrivals to New Zealand. Current
Issues in Tourism, 24, 2445–2457
Gavriilidis, K. (2021). Social connectedness and tourism demand. Current Issues in Tourism, 4(14), 1930–1934.
Genç, M. (2013). Migration and tourism flows to New Zealand. In Á. Matias, P. Nijkamp, & M. Sarmento (eds)
Quantitative methods in tourism economics. Physica. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-2879-5_7
Ghalia, T., Fidrmuc, J., Samargandi, N., & Sohag, K. (2019). Institutional quality, political risk and tourism. Tourism
Management Perspectives, 32, 100576
Ghani, G. M. (2016). Tourist arrivals to Malaysia from Muslim countries. Tourism Management Perspectives, 20, 1–9.
Ghani, G. M. (2019a). Tourist arrivals to Muslim countries: Is religion important? Tourism Culture and Communi-
cation, 19(3), 209–214
Ghani, G. M. (2019b). Tourist arrivals to Muslim Countries: Pre-and post-september 11. Journal of Economic Coop-
eration and Development, 40(3), 25–36
Ghosh, S. (2021). Inbound Australian tourism demand from Asia: A panel gravity model. Journal of Economic
Studies, 48(7), 1388–1400.
Giambona, F., Dreassi, E., & Magrini, A. (2020). Tourism attractiveness in Italy: Regional empirical evidence using
a pairwise comparisons modelling approach. International Journal of Tourism Research, 22(1), 26–41
Gil-Pareja, S., Llorca-Vivero, R., & Martínez-Serrano, J. A. (2007a). The impact of embassies and consulates on
Tourism. Tourism Management, 28, 355–360
Gil-Pareja, S., Llorca-Vivero, R., & Martínez-Serrano, J. A. (2007b). The effect of EMU on Tourism. Review of Inter-
national Economics, 15(2), 302–312
Goh, C., & Law, R. (2011). The methodological progress of tourism demand forecasting: A review of related litera-
ture. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 28(3), 296–317.
Görmüs, S., & Göçer, I. (2010) The socio-economic determinant of tourism demand in Turkey: A panel data
approach. International Research Journal of Finance and Economics, 55, 88–99.
Gouveia, S., Rebelo, J., Lourenço-Gomes, L., & Guedes, A. (2017) International demand for the Douro (Portugal)
river cruises: A gravity model approach. Tourism Economics, 23(8), 1679–1686.
Groizard, J. L., & Santana-Gallego, M. (2018). The destruction of cultural heritage and international tourism: The
case of the Arab countries. Journal of Cultural Heritage, 33, 285–292
Groizard, J. L., Ismael, M., & Santana-Gallego, M. (2021). Political Upheavals, tourism flight, and spillovers: The
case of the Arab spring. Journal of Travel Research, 61(4), 921–939 https://doi.org/10.1177/00472875211002652
Guardia, T., Muro, J., & Such, M. J. (2014). Measuring and analysing domestic tourism: The importance of an origin
and destination matrix. Tourism Economics, 20(3), 451–472
Hanafiah, M. H. M., & Harun, M. F. M. (2010). Tourism demand in Malaysia: A cross-sectional pool time-series
analysis. International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance, 1(1), 80–83.
Harb, G., & Bassil, C. (2020a). Gravity analysis of tourism flows and the ‘multilateral resistance to tourism. Current
Issues in Tourism, 23(6), 666–678.
Harb, G., & Bassil, C. (2020b). Terrorism and inbound tourism: Does immigration have a moderating effect?
Tourism Economics, 26(3), 500–518.
Head, K., & Mayer, T. (2014). Gravity equations: Workhorse, Toolkit, and Cookbook. Handbook of International
Economics, 4, 131–195.
Helpman, E., & Krugman, P. R. (1985). Market structure and foreign trade. The MIT Press.
Huang, C. H., Tsaur, J. R., & Yang, C. H. (2012). Does world heritage list really induce more tourists? Evidence from
Macau. Tourism Management, 33, 1450–1457
Huang, X., Han, Y., Gong, X., & Liu, X. (2020). Does the belt and road initiative stimulate China’s inbound tourist
market? An empirical study using the gravity model with a DID method. Tourism Economics, 26(2), 299–323.
Ibragimov, K., Perles-Ribes, J. F., & Ramón-Rodríguez, A. B. (2021) The economic determinants of tourism in Cen-
tral Asia: A gravity model applied approach. Tourism Economics, https://doi.org/10.1177/13548166211009985
Jiao, E. X., & Chen, J. L. (2019) Tourism forecasting: A review of methodological developments over the last decade.
Jong, M. C., Puah, C. H., & Arip, M. A. (2020). Modelling tourism demand: An augmented gravity model. Jurnal
Ekonomi Malaysia, 54(2), 105–112.
Kao, C., & Chiang, M. H. (2000). On the estimation and inference of a cointegrated regression in panel data. in B.
H. Baltagi et al. (eds.), Nonstationary panels, panel cointegration and dynamic panels: pp. 179–222.
Kaplan, F., & Aktas, A. R. (2016). The Turkey tourism demand: A gravity model. The Empirical Economics Letters,
15(3), 265–272
Karaman, A. S. (2016). The pernicious impact of visa restrictions on inbound tourism: The case of Turkey. Turkish
Studies, 17(3), 502–524.
Khadaroo, J., & Seetanah, B. (2008). The role of transport infrastructure in international Tourism development: A
gravity model approach. Tourism Management, 29, 831–840.
Khalid, U., Okafor, L. E., & Aziz, N. (2020). Armed conflict, military expenditure and international tourism.
Khalid, U., Okafor, L. E., & Shafiullah, M. (2020). The effects of economic and financial crises on international
tourist flows: A cross-country analysis. Journal of Travel Research, 59(2), 315–334.
Khalid, U., Okafor, L. E., & Burzynska, K. (2021). Do regional trade agreements enhance international
tourism flows? Evidence from a cross-country analysis. Journal of Travel Research, https://doi.org/10.1177/
00472875211028321
Khalid, U., Okafor, L. E., & Sanusi, O. I.(2021). Exploring diverse sources of linguistic influence on international
tourism flows. Journal of Travel Research, 61(3), 696-714 https://doi.org/10.1177/0047287520988909
Khan, K., Su, C. W., Xiao, Y. D., Zhu, H., & Zhang, X. (2021). Trends in tourism under economic uncertainty.
Tourism Economics, 27(4), 841–85
Kosnan, S. S. A., Ismail, N. W., & Kaliappan, S. R. (2013). Determinants of International Tourism in Malaysia:
Evidence from gravity model. Jurnal Ekonomi Malaysia, 47(1), 131–138.
Leitao, N. C. (2010). Does trade help to explain tourism demand? The case of Portugal. Theoretical and Applied
Economics, 17(3), 63–74.
Li, G., Song, H., & Witt, S. F. (2005). Recent developments in econometric modeling and forecasting. Journal of
Travel Research, 44, 82–99
Lien, D., Ghosh, S., & Yamarik, S. (2014). Does the Confucius institute impact international travel to China? A panel
data analysis. Applied Economics, 46(17), 1985–1995,
Lim, C. (1997). Review of international tourism demand models. Annals of Tourism Research, 24(4), 835–849.
Lim, C. (1999). Meta-analytic review of international tourism demand. Journal of Travel Research, 37, 273–284.
Liou, J. L., Hsu, P. C., & Wu, P. I. (2020). The effect of China’s open-door tourism policy on Taiwan: Promoting
or suppressing tourism from other countries to Taiwan? Tourism Management, 78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
tourman.2019.104055
Liu, H., Liu, Y., Wang, Y., & Pan, C. (2019). Hot topics and emerging trends in tourism forecasting research: A
scientometric review. Tourism Economics, 25(3), 448–468
Llorca-Vivero, R. (2008). Terrorism and international tourism: New evidence. Defence and Peace Economics, 19(2),
169–188,
Long, W. H. (1970). The economics of air travel gravity models. Journal of Regional Science, 10(3), 353–363
Lopez, L., Bianchi, G., & Chen, Y. (2021). Does official development assistance promote tourism demand for donor
countries? Evidence from Switzerland. Tourism Economics, https://doi.org/10.1177/13548166211041416
Lorde, T., Li, G., & Airey, D. (2016). Modeling caribbean tourism demand: An augmented gravity approach. Journal
of Travel Research, 55(7), 946–956.
Malaj, V., & Kapiki, S. (2016). Determinants of tourism flows to Greece: A gravity model approach. Environmental
Anthropology eJournal.
Malamud, B. (1973). Gravity model calibration of tourist travel to Las Vegas. Journal of Leisure Research, 5, 23–32.
Marrocu, E., & Paci, R. (2013). Different tourists to different destinations. Evidence from spatial interaction models.
Tourism Management, 39, 71–83
Massidda, C., & Etzo, I. (2012). The determinants of Italian domestic tourism: A panel data analysis. Tourism Man-
agement, 33, 603–610
Martí, L., & Puertas, R. (2017). Determinants of tourist arrivals in European Mediterranean countries: Analysis of
competitiveness. European Journal of Tourism Research, 15, 131–143
Mata, T., & Llano-Verduras, C. (2012). Spatial pattern and domestic tourism: An econometric analysis using inter-
regional monetary flows by type of journey. Papers in Regional Science, 91(2), 437–471
McAllister, D. M., & Klett, F. R., (1976). A modified gravity model of regional recreation activity with an application
to ski trips. Journal of Leisure Research, 8, 21–32
McKay, A., & Tekleselassie, T. G. (2018). Tall paper walls: The political economy of visas and cross-border travel.
The World Economy, 41(11), 2914–2933.
Montant, G. (2020). The determinants of the hotel sector revenues: The case of French Polynesia. Tourism Eco-
nomics, 26(5), 809–829
Morley, C., Rosselló, J., & Santana-Gallego, M. (2014). Gravity models for tourism demand: Theory and use. Annals
of Tourism Research, 48, 1–10.
Muhammad, A., & Andrews, D. (2016). Determining tourist arrivals in Uganda: The impact of distance, trade and
origin-specific factors. African Journal of Accounting, Economics, Finance and Banking Research, 2(2), 51–62
Muñoz, C., Álvarez, A., & Baños, J. F. (2021). Modelling the effect of weather on tourism: Does it vary across sea-
sons?, Tourism Geographies, https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2020.1868019
Neumayer, E., & Plümper, T. (2016). Spatial spill-overs from terrorism on tourism: Western victims in Islamic des-
tination countries. Public Choice, 169, 195–206.
Okafor, L. E., Khalid, U., & Then, T. (2018). Common unofficial language, development and international tourism.
Tourism Management, 67, 127–138.
Okafor, L. E., & Khalid, U. (2021). Regaining international tourism attractiveness after an armed conflict: The role
of security spending. Current Issues in Tourism, 24(3) 385–402.
Okafor, L. E., Tan, C. M., & Khalid, U. (2021a). Does panda diplomacy promote Chinese outbound tourism flows?
Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 49, 54–64.
Okafor, L. E., Khalid, U., & Burzynska, K. (2021b). The effect of migration on international tourism flows: The role
of linguistic networks and common languages. Journal of Travel Research, 61(4), 818–836 https://doi.org/10.1177/
00472875211008250
Okafor, L. E., Adeola, O., & Folarin, O. (2021c). Natural disasters, trade openness and international tourism: The role
of income levels across countries. Tourism Recreation Research, https://doi.org/10.1080/02508281.2021.1891740
Ortega, F., & G. Peri (2013). The effect of income and immigration policies on international migration. Migration
Studies, 1, 47–74.
Panzera, E., Graaff, T., & Groot, H. L. F. (2021). European cultural heritage and tourism flows: The magnetic role
of superstar World Heritage Sites. Papers in Regional Sciences, 100(1), 101–122
Papatheodorou, A., (1999). The demand for international tourism in the mediterranean region. Applied Economics,
31, 1–12
Park, J. Y., & Jang, S. S. (2014). An extended gravity model: Applying destination competitiveness. Journal of Travel
& Tourism Marketing, 31, 799–816
Park, S. Y., & Pan, B. (2018). Identifying the next non-stop flying market with a big data approach. Tourism Man-
agement, 66, 411–421
Patuelli, R., Mussoni, M., & Candela, G. (2013). The effects of World Heritage Sites on domestic tourism: A spatial
interaction model for Italy. Journal of Geographical Systems, 15, 369–402
Pedroni, P. (1996). Fully modified OLS for heterogenous cointegrated panels and the case of purchasing power
parity. Working Paper 96–020, Indiana University
Pedroni, P. (1999). Critical values for cointegration tests in heterogeneous panels with multiple regressors. Oxford
Bulletin of Economic and Statistics, 61, 653–670
Pedroni, P. (2001). Purchasing power parity tests in cointegrated panels. The Review of Economic and Statistics, 83,
727–731
Peng, B., Song, H., & Crouch, G. I. (2014). A meta-analysis of international tourism demand forecasting and impli-
cations for practice. Tourism Management, 45, 181–193.
Petit, S., & Seetaram, N. (2019). Measuring the effect of revealed cultural preferences on tourism exports. Journal
of Travel Research, 58(8), 1262–1273.
Philbrick, A. T. (1976). A short history of the development of the gravity model. Australian Road Research, 5(4),
40–54.
Pompili, T., Pisati, M., & Lorenzini, E. (2019). Determinants of international tourist choices in Italian provinces: A
joint demand–supply approach with spatial effects. Papers in Regional Science, 98(6), 2251–2273
Priego, F. J., Rosselló, J., & Santana-Gallego, M. (2015). The impact of climate change on domestic tourism: A gravity
model for Spain. Regional Environmental Change, 15, 291–300.
Provenzano, D., & Baggio, R. (2017). The contribution of human migration to tourism: The VFR travel between the
EU28 member states. International Journal of Tourism Research, 19, 412–420.
Provenzano, D. (2020). The migration–tourism nexus in the EU28. Tourism Economics, 26(8), 1374–1393.
Puah, C. H., Thien, F. T., Arip, M. A., & Chin, M. Y. (2019). Modelling tourism demand in Vietnam. International
Journal of Economics and Management, 13(2), 319–329
Pyers, C. E. (1966). Evaluation of intervening opportunities trip distribution model. Highway Research Record, 114,
71–98.
Quandt, R. E., & Baumol, W. J. (1966) The demand for abstract transport modes: Theory and measurement. Journal
of Regional Science, 6(2), 13–26.
Quandt, R. E., & Young, K. H. (1969). Cross-sectional travel demand models: Estimates and tests. Journal of Regional
Science, 9, 201–214
Quandt, R. E., & Baumol, W. J. (1969). The demand for abstract transport modes: Some hopes. Journal of Regional
Science, 9, 159–162.
Ravenstein, E. G. (1885). The laws of migration. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 48, 167–235
Reilly, W. J. (1929). Methods for the study of retail relationships. University of Texas, Bureau of Business Research.
Research Monograph No. 4. Available at: https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/60544
Rey, B., Myro, R. L., & Galera, A. (2011). Effect of low-cost airlines on tourism in Spain. A dynamic panel data
model. Journal of Air Transport Management, 17, 163–167.
Rosselló, J., Becken, S., & Santana-Gallego, M. (2020). The effects of natural disasters on international tourism: A
global analysis. Tourism Management, 79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2020.104080
Rosselló, J., & He, J. (2019). Tourist arrivals versus tourist expenditures in modelling tourism demand. Tourism
Economics, 26(8), 1311-1326 https://doi.org/10.1177/1354816619867810
Rosselló, J., & Santana-Gallego, M. (2014). Recent trends in international tourist climate preferences: A revised
picture for climatic change scenarios. Climatic Change, 124, 119–132.
Rosselló, J. Santana-Gallego, M., & Waqas, A. (2017). Infectious disease risk and international tourism demand.
Health Policy and Planning, 32, 538–548.
Saayman, A., Figini, P., & Cassella, S. (2016). The influence of formal trade agreements and informal economic
cooperation on international tourism flows. Tourism Economics, 22(6), 1274–1300.
Santana-Gallego, M., Ledesma-Rodríguez, F., & Pérez-Rodríguez, J. (2016). The euro effect: Tourism creation,
tourism diversion and tourism potential within the European Union. European Union Politics, 17(1), 46–68.
Santana-Gallego, M., & Fourie, J. (2020). Tourism falls apart: How insecurity affects African tourism. Tourism
Economics, https://doi.org/10.1177/1354816620978128
Santana-Gallego, M., & Paniagua, J. (2022). Tourism and migration: Identifying the channels with gravity models.
Tourism Economic, 28(2), 394–417. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354816620972597
Santeramo, F. G., & Morelli, M. (2016). Modelling tourism flows through gravity models: A quantile regression
approach. Current Issues in Tourism, 19(11), 1077–1083.
Santos-Silva, J. M. C., & Tenreyro, S. (2006). The log of gravity. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 88(4), 641–658
Santos-Silva, J. M. C., & Tenreyro, S. (2010). On the existence of the maximum likelihood estimates in Poisson
regression. Economics Letters, 107(2), 310–312
Saunders, P. R., Seuter, H. F., & Jarvis, J. P. (1981). Forecasting recreation demand in the upper Savannah River
basin. Annals of Tourism Research, 8, 236–256.
Seetanah, B., Durbarry, R., & Ragodoo, J. F. N. (2010). Using the panel cointegration approach to analyse the deter-
minants of tourism demand in South Africa. Tourism Economics, 16(3), 715–729.
Sheldon, P. J., & Var, T., (1985). Tourism forecasting: A review of empirical research. Journal of Forecasting, 4, 183–
195.
Sinclair, T. M. (1998). Tourism and economic development: A survey. The Journal of Development Studies, 34, 1–51
Siskos, Е., & Darvidou, К. (2018). Bilateral trade and tourism relations between the EU and BSEC countries. Prob-
lems and Perspectives in Management, 16(4), 91–101
Smeral, E. (1988). Tourism demand, economic theory and econometrics: An integrated approach. Journal of Travel
Research, 26(4):38–43.
Smith, S. L. J., & Brown, B. (1981). Directional bias in vacation travel. Annals of Tourism Research, 8, 257–270
Smith, S. L. J. (1985). U.S. Vacation travel patterns: Correlates of distance decay and the willingness to travel. Leisure
Sciences: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 7(2), 151–174
Song, H., Qiu, R. T. R., & Park, J. (2019). A review of research on tourism demand forecasting. Annals of Tourism
Research, 75, 338–362.
Song, H., & Li, G. (2008). Tourism demand modelling and forecasting-A review of recent research. Tourism Man-
agement, 29(2), 203–220.
Song, H., Kim, J. H., & Shu Yang, S. (2010). Confidence intervals for tourism demand elasticity. Annals of Tourism
Research, 37(2), 377–396.
Song, W. (2010). Impacts of Olympics on exports and tourism. Journal of Economic Development, 35(4), 93–110.
Song, H., Witt, S. F., & Li, G. (2009). The advanced econometrics of tourism demand. Routledge.
Sun, Y. Y., & Lin, P. C. (2019). How far will we travel? A global distance pattern of international travel from both
demand and supply perspectives. Tourism Economics, 25(8), 1200–1223.
Tang, R. (2021). Does trade facilitation promote the efficiency of inbound tourism? The empirical test based on
Japan. International Journal of Tourism Research, 23(1), 39–55
Taplin, J. H. E., & Qiu, M. (1997). Car trip attraction and route choice in Australia. Annals of Tourism Research,
24(3), 624–637.
Tavares, J. M., & Leitao, N. C. (2017). The determinants of international tourism demand for Brazil. Tourism Eco-
nomics, 23(4), 834–845.
Tinbergen, J. (1962). Shaping the world economy: Suggestions for an International Economic Policy. The Twentieth
Century Fund.
Tsui, W., Faruk, B.; Tan, D., & Lau, O. (2018). New Zealand business tourism: Exploring the impact of economic
policy uncertainties. Tourism Economics, 24(4), 386–417
Ulucak, R., Yucel, A. G., & Ilkay, S. C. (2020). Dynamics of tourism demand in Turkey: Panel data analysis using
gravity model. Tourism Economics, 26(8), 1394–1414
UNWTO (2021). Compendium of tourism statistics, data 2015–2019. United Nation World Tourism Organization.
https://www.e-unwto.org/toc/unwtotfb/current
Uysal, M., & Crompton, J. L. (1985) An overview of approaches used to forecast tourism demand. Journal of Travel
Research, 23(4), 7–15.
Velasquez, M. E., & Oh, J. (2013). What determines international tourist arrivals to Peru? A gravity approach. Inter-
national Area Studies Review, 16(4), 357–369
Vierhaus, C. (2019). The international tourism effect of hosting the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup.
Tourism Economics, 25(7), 1009–1028
Vietze, C. (2012). Cultural effects on inbound tourism into the USA: A gravity approach. Tourism Economics, 18(1),
121–138.
Voltes-Dorta, A., Jiménez, J. L., & Suárez-Alemán, A. (2016). The impact of ETA’s dissolution on Domestic Tourism
in Spain. Defence and Peace Economics, 27(6), 854–870
Wang, Y., & Davidson, M. C. G. (2010). A review of micro-analyses of tourist expenditure. Current Issues in Tourism,
13(6), 507–524.
Waqas, A., Rosselló, J., & Santana-Gallego, M. (2021). New insights into the role of personal income on international
tourism. Journal of Travel Research, 60(4), 799–809.
Wilson, A. G. (1967). A statistical theory of spatial distribution models. Transportation Research, 1, 253–269.
Witt, S. F., & Witt, C. A. (1995). Forecasting tourism demand: A review of empirical research. International Journal
of Forecasting, 11(3), 447–475.
Wu, D. C., Song, H., & Shen, S. (2017). New developments in tourism and hotel demand modeling and forecasting.
International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 29(1), 507–529.
Xu, D., & Dong, D. (2020). Evaluating the impact of air pollution on China’s inbound tourism: A gravity model
approach. Sustainability, 12(4), 1456. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12041456
Xu, L., Wang, S., Li, J., Tang, L., & Shao, Y. (2019). Modelling international tourism flows to China: A panel data
analysis with the gravity model. Tourism Economics, 25(7), 1047–1069.
Yang, Y., & Wong, K. K. F. (2012). The influence of cultural distance on China inbound tourism flows: A panel data
gravity model approach. Asian Geographer, 29(1), 21–37
Yang, C. H., Lin, H. L., & Han, C. C. (2010). Analysis of international tourist arrivals in China: The role of World
Heritage Sites. Tourism Management, 31, 827–837.
Yang, Y., Liu, H., & Li, X. R. (2019a). The World Is Flatter? Examining the Relationship between Cultural Distance
and International Tourist Flows. Journal of Travel Research, 58(2), 224–240.
Yang, Y., Li, D., & Li, X. R. (2019b). Public transport connectivity and intercity tourist flows. Journal of Travel
Research, 58(1), 25–41.
Yazdi, S. K., & Khanalizadeh, B. (2017). Tourism demand: A panel data approach. Current Issues in Tourism, 20(8),
787–800
Yerdelen-Tatoglu, F., & Gul, H. (2019). Analysis of tourism demand using a multi-dimensional panel gravity model.
Tourism Review, 75(2), 433–447.
Yotov, Y. V. (2012). A simple solution to the distance puzzle in international trade. Economics Letters, 117, 794–798
Yotov, Y. V., Piermartini, R., Monteiro, J.-A., & Larch, M. (2016). An advanced guide to trade policy analy-
sis: The structural gravity model. World Trade Organization, https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/
advancedwtounctad2016_e.pdf
Zhang, Y., & Findlay, C. (2014). Air transport policy and its impacts on passenger traffic and tourist flows. Journal
of Air Transport Management, 34, 42–48
Zhang, Y., Wu, T. S., & Li, X. R. (2019). The impacts of cultural values on bilateral international tourist flows: A
panel data gravity model. Current Issues in Tourism, 22(8), 967–981
Zhou, X. Santana-Jiménez, Y., Pérez-Rodríguez, J. V., & Hernández, J. M. (2019). Air pollution and tourism demand:
A case study of Beijing, China. International Journal of Tourism Research, 21(6), 747–757
Zipf, G. K. (1946). The P1 P2 /D hypothesis: On the intercity movement of persons. American Sociological Review,
11(6), 677–686.
How to cite this article: Rosselló Nadal, J., & Santana Gallego, M. (2022). Gravity
models for tourism demand modeling: Empirical review and outlook. Journal of Economic
Surveys, 36, 1358–1409. https://doi.org/10.1111/joes.12502
APPENDIX: Table A.1. Summary of 143 key studies
Dependent variable characteristics
Outb-
oud/
Inte- Diffe- Inbo-
rnati- Dom- rent und
onal estic peri- Bilat- aggre- Geographical Fixed
Author (year) flows flows ods eral gates Independent variables context Main topic Estimation method effects
Adeola and Evans (2019) x x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; EX; Africa Mobile phones/ Dynamic panel data model O; D
ROSSELLÓ NADAL and SANTANA GALLEGO
OSOC; POL internet users (GMM)

Adeola and Evans x x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; ER; INF; Africa ICT and infrastructure Dynamic Panel Data
(2020) ENV; OSOC; (GMM)
Akter et al. (2017) x x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O, EX; PR Bangladesh General determinants Panel-RE (GLS),
panel-corrected standard
error (PCSE)
Altaf (2021) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; India General determinants OLS; FGLS; 2SLS O
PR; TRADE
Alvarez-Diaz et al. x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; PR; Spain General determinants OLS and Spatial
(2017) GEOG; AIR; INF; autoregressive (SAR)
model
Archibald et al. (2008) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; Caribbean General determinants Dynamic panel data model O; D; Y
POP-D; EX; PR; TC (GMM) and Panel-FE
Artal-Tur et al. (2016) x x x Dist; BORDER; COL; CL; POL; World Visa OLS; PPML P; OY; DY
TRADE; POL, MIG; FTA;
VISA
Balli et al. (2013) x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; COL; CL; Turkey Soap operas/visa policy IV and Dynamic panel data Y
REL; EX; INF; TRADE; (GMM)
OSOC; VISA;
(Continues)
1383
1384
Outb-
oud/
Inte- Diffe- Inbo-
Balli et al. (2016) x x x Dist; GDP-O; CL; COL; OECD Migration/ OLS and Dynamic panel Y
BORDER; EX; PR; TRADE; institutional quality data (GMM)
POL; EVENT; MIG
Balli et al. (2018) x x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; EX; PR; Gulf Cooperation Migration/ Panel-FE P; Y
BORDER; CL; TRADE; COL; Council expatriate effects
POL; CLIM; MIG; TIME;
EVENT
Balli et al. (2020) x x x GDP-D; EX; PR; TRADE; POL; Gulf Cooperation Migration/ Dynamic panel data (GMM) P; Y
EVENT; MIG Council institutional quality
Breda and Oddo (2019) x x GDP-O; POP-O; TC; PR; EX Italy Intensive and extensive Panel-FE O; Y
margins
Cevik (2021) x x x Dist; GDP-D; GDP-O; POP-D; World Infectious Diseases OLS; PPML; 2SLS-IV O; D; Y
POP-O; CL; COL; EVENT
Chasapopoulos et al. x x x Dist; GDP-O; EX; PR; TRADE; Greece General determinants Dynamic Panel data (GMM)
(2014) INF; POL; EVENT
Cheung and Saha (2015) x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; EX; CL; Australia Cultural Distance OLS; Quantile regression
RELIG; ECON
Chow and Tsui (2019) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; China General determinants OLS; Panel-FE; Panel-RE D
POP-D; PR; EX; BORDER;
TRADE; SEC; INF; AIR
Crampton and Tan x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; TC; Pacific and Far East General determinants Linear regression
(1973)
Cró et al. (2021) x x x Dist; GDP-O; PR; AIR; CLIM; Madeira (Portugal) Promotion expenditures Dynamic panel data (GMM)
GEOG; EVENT
Culiuc (2014) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; World General determinants OLS; Panel-FE; Panel-RE; O; D; Y
POP-D; CURR; FTA; Border, Hausman-Taylor (HT)
COL; CL; TRADE; EX; AIR;
INF; TIME; SEC; WHS
(Continues)
Outb-
oud/
Inte- Diffe- Inbo-
Czaika and Neumayer x x x x Dist; MIG; VISA; TIME; COL; World Time zone differences PPML OY; DY
(2020) BORDER; GEOG
De Vita (2014) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; OECD Exchange Rate Regime Dynamic panel data (GMM) Y
POP-D; PR; EX; BORDER;
CL; TRADE; COL; CURR;

ECON; FTA
Deluna and Jeon (2014) x x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; PR; EX; Philippines General determinants Panel-RE
CL; COL; POL; FTA; AIR;
EVENT
Dropsy et al. (2020) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; PR; World Insularity and 2SLS-IV; quasi-maximum
CURR; CL; COL; REL; OSOC; remoteness likelihood (QML)
POL; GEOG
Durbarry (2008) x x x GDP-O; GDP-D; EX; PR; CL; United Kingdom Tourism taxes Panel-FE and Panel-RE P
GEOG
Eilat and Einav (2004) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; BORDER; World General determinants Multinomial Logit O; D; P; Y
CL; GEOG; TRADE; SEC
Eric et al. (2020) x x x GDP-D; GDP-O; POP-D; POP-O; Kenya Air connectivity OLS; PPML; Panel-FE and P; Y
TC; SEC; POL; TRADE; AIR Panel-RE
Eryigit et al. (2010) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; PR; Turkey General determinants Panel-RE
BORDER; TRADE; EVENT
Fotheringham (1983) x x Dist; POP-O; POP-D; USA Distance decay Maximum likelihood
Fourie and Santana x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; World Mega events OLS O; D; Y
(2011) POP-D; PR; BORDER; CL;
TRADE; COL; CURR;
EVENT
(Continues)
1385
1386
Outb-
oud/
Inte- Diffe- Inbo-
Fourie and Santana x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; World Cultural affinity (past OLS O; D; Y
(2013a) POP-D; EX; BORDER; CL; migration)
COL; CURR;MIG; FTA
Fourie and Santana x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; World/Africa General determinants OLS and Dynamic panel O; D; Y
(2013b) POP-D; EX; BORDER; CL; data (GMM)
OSOC; COL; CURR; FTA;
INF; TRADE; REL; PS; GEOG
Fourie and x x x GDP-O; POL; EVENT South Africa Mega Events Panel-FE O; Y
Santana-Gallego
(2017)
Fourie et al. (2015) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; PR; CL; World Religion OLS O; D; Y; OY;
COL; POL; CURR; CLIM; DY
REL; BORDER; GEOG
Fourie et al. (2016) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; PR; World Religion OLS O; D; Y
BORDER; CL; COL; POL;
CURR; CLIM; REL; GEOG
Fourie et al. (2020) x x x GDP-O; GDP-D; PR; FTA; SEC; World Terrorism and security Panel-FE P; Y
threats
Galli et al. (2016) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; Brazil General determinants OLS
POP-D
Gani and Clemes (2021) x x x GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; POP-D; New Zealand General determinants, OLS; Panel-FE; Panel O
Dist; CL; REL; SEC;POL Business Corrected Standard Error
environment (PCSE)
Gavriilidis (2021) x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; Dist; PR; World Social connectedness OLS O; D
BORDER; CL; COL; OSOC
Genç (2013) x x x Dist; GDP-D, GDP-O; EX; CL; New Zealand Migration FE and RE negative O
MIG binomial panel model
(Continues)
Outb-
oud/
Inte- Diffe- Inbo-
Ghalia et al. (2019) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POL-O; World Institutional quality and OLS; Panel-FE; O; D; P; Y
POL;D; BORDER; CL; COL; political risk Hausman-Taylor; PPML

POL; ECON
Ghani (2016) x x Dist; POP-O; GDP-O; REL; Malaysia Religion OLS and Quantile
regression
Ghani (2019a) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; BORDER; Muslim countries Religion OLS O; D; Y
CL; COL; RELIG
Ghani (2019b) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; Muslim countries Terrorism OLS; Panel-RE
POP-D; BORDER; CL; COL;
RELIG
Ghosh (2021) x x x GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; DIST; Australia General determinants Common correlated effects O; D; Y
PR; EX; ECON; POL (CCE)
Giambona et al. (2020) x x POP-O; INF; AIR; CUL; Italy General determinants Poisson Generalized Linear O; D
Mixed Model (GLMM)
Gil-Pareja et al. (2007a) x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; World Embassies and OLS O; D
POP-D; PR; BORDER; CL; consulates
FTA; POL; GEOG
Gil-Pareja et al. (2007b) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; OECD Common currency Panel-FE and Panel-RE P; Y
POP-D; PR; BORDER; CL;
FTA; CURR; EX
(Continues)
1387
1388

Outb-
oud/
Inte- Diffe- Inbo-
Görmüs and Göçe x x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; EX; PR; Turkey General determinants Panel-RE
(2010) TRADE; INF; EVENT; ECON
Gouveia et al. (2017) x x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; EX; PR; Portugal General determinants OLS; Panel-RE; Panel-FE O; Y
OSOC; CURR; and Hausman-Taylor
(HT)
Groizard and x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; Arab countries World Heritage Sites OLS and Panel-FE O; D; P; Y
Santana-Gallego POP-D; CL; COL; BORDER;
(2018) FTA; POL; REL; SEC;WHS
Groizard et al. (2021) x x x GDP-D; POP-D; SEC; POL; REL Arab countries Terrorism (Arab Spring) PPML OY; P
Guardia et al. (2014) x x x GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; POP-D; Spain General determinants Panel-RE; Hausman–Taylor Y
PR; GEOG; BORDER; OSOC; and Amemiya–MaCurdy
Hanafiah & Harun x x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; EX; PR; Malaysia General determinants OLS
(2010) EVENT
Harb and Bassil (2020a) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; EX; OECD Multilateral Resistances Common Correlated Effects O; D; P; Y;
BORDER; CL; TRADE; COL; (CCE) OY; DT
CURR; VISA; FTA
Harb and Bassil (2020b) x x x Dist; GDP-D; GDP-O; TRADE; OECD Migration and terrorism PPML O; D; Y
EX; MIG; SEC; CL; BORDER;
COL; CURR; VISA; FTA
(Continues)
Outb-
oud/
Inte- Diffe- Inbo-
X. Huang et al. (2020) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; EX; China Promotion Campaign OLS O; Y
TRADE; CUL; POL; VISA;

BORDER
C. H. Huang et al. (2012) x x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; EX; INF; Macau World Heritage Sites Panel-FE; Panel-RE P; Y
SEC; EVENT; WHS
Ibragimov et al. (2021) x x x GDP-D; GDP-O; PR; Dist; Central Asia General determinants OLS; Panel-FE; Panel-RE
BORDER; CL;POL
Jong et al. (2020) x x x GDP-D; GDP-O; PR; Dist; Sabah (Borneo) General determinants OLS; Panel-RE; Panel-FE
BORDER; CL;POL
Kaplan and Aktas (2016) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; BORDER; Turkey General determinants PPML
FTA; EVENT
Karaman (2016) x x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; BORDER; Turkey Visas OLS; Dynamic panel data Y
GEOG; VISA; TRADE (GMM)
Keum (2010) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; ECON South Korea General determinants Panel-RE
Khadaroo and Seetanah x x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; PR; 28 countries Transport infrastructure Dynamic panel data (GMM)
(2008) BORDER; CL; INF; AIR
Khalid, Okafor, & Aziz x x x Dist; POP-D; POP-O; GDP-D; World Armed conflict, military OLS; Panel-FE O; D; P; Y
(2020) GDP-O; BORDER; CL; COL; spending
GEOG; ECON; SEC
(Continues)
1389
1390

Outb-
oud/
Inte- Diffe- Inbo-
Khalid, Okafor, & x x x Dist; POP-D; POP-O; GDP-D; World Economic and OLS; Panel-FE O; D; Y
Shafiullah (2020) GDP-O; PR; BORDER; CL; Financial Crises
COL; GEOG; EVENT; ECON
Khalid, Okafor, & x x x GDP-D; GDP-O; PR; Dist; World Regional Trade OLS; PPML O; D; Y
Burzynska (2021) BORDER; CL; COL; FTA; Agreements
GEOG
Khalid, Okafor, & x x x GDP-D; GDP-O; PR; Dist; Word Common language OLS; PPML O; D; Y
Sanusi (2021) BORDER; CL; COL GEOG
Khan et al. (2021) x x x GDP-O; EX; INF; POL United Kingdom Economic policy Residual-based bootstrap
uncertainty
Kosnan et al. (2013) x x x Dist; GDP-D, GDP-O; PR; Malaysia General determinants Panel-RE
BORDER; CL; INF; AIR;
Leitao (2010) x x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; EX; Portugal International trade Panel-FE; Tobit model; O; Y
TRADE; dynamic panel (GMM)
Lien et al. (2014) x x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; PR; CL; China Cultural values OLS; PPML O;Y
CUL
Liou et al. (2020) x x x Dist; POP-D; POP-O; GDP-D; China Promotion Campaign Panel-RE
GDP-O; PR; EVENT; CL
Llorca-Vivero (2008) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; World Terrorism OLS O; D
GEOG; FTA; POL; SEC;
Long (1970) x x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; POP-D; USA General determinants Linear regression Y
PR;
Lopez et al. (2021) x x x GDP-O; POP-O; Dist; EX; FTA Switzerland Official development OLS; Panel-FE; Panel-RE
assistant
(Continues)
Outb-
oud/
Inte- Diffe- Inbo-
Lorde et al. (2016) x x x GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; Caribbean General determinants Dynamic panel data (GMM)
POP-D; PR; CLIM; TC; ECON
Malaj and Kapiki (2016) x x x Dist; GDP-O; INF; POL; CLIM; Greece General determinants Panel-RE O
FTA
Malamud (1973) x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; GEOG; USA General determinants Linear multivariate
ECON; regression
Marrocu and Paci (2013) x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; Italy General determinants Spatial autoregressive model
POP-D; PR; GEOG; INF;
OSOC; AIR; ENV; TC
Martí and Puertas (2017) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; Spain General determinants Panel-RE; Panel-FE; OLS
POP-D; ECON; BORDER, CL,
COL
Massidda and Etzo x x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; POP-D; Italy General determinants Dynamic panel data (GMM) Y
(2012) PR; INF; SEC; ENV; OSOC
Mata and x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; BORDER; Spain General determinants OLS; Bayesian-OLS;
Llano-Verduras (2012) GEOG; INF; CLIM; MIG Bayesian Spatial
Autoregresive (SAR);
Tobit; Tobit SAR
McKay and x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; World Visas OLS; two-stage Heckman
Tekleselassie (2018) POP-D; BORDER; CL; COL; equation
VISA; FTA; CUL; GEOG
Montant (2020) x x x Dist; PR; ER; INF; POL French Polynesia General determinants OLS; Panel-RE; PPML O; Y
(Continues)
1391
1392
Outb-
oud/
Inte- Diffe- Inbo-
Muhammad and x x x Dist; GDP-O; EX; BORDER; Uganda General determinants OLS; Panel-FE O
Andrews (2016) TRADE;
Muñoz et al. (2021) x x x GDP-O; POP-O; Dist; CLIM; Spain Climate change OLS Y
GEOG
Neumayer and Plümper x x x GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-D; Islamic countries Terrorism PPML P; Y
(2016) POP-O; SEC
Okafor and Khalid x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; World Security spending OLS; Panel-FE O; D; P; Y
(2021) POP-D; BORDER; GEOG; CL;
COL; POL
Okafor et al. (2018) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; World Common language OLS; Panel-RE; PPML O; D; Y
POP-D; CL; COL; BORDER;
GEOG
Okafor, Tan, & Khalid x x x GDP-D; POP-O; Dist; PR; China Panda diplomacy Panel-FE; Panel-RE; PPML D
(2021) BORDER; CL; COL; GEOG;
EVENT;
Okafor, Khalid, & x x x GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; World Migration and common OLS; 2SLS; PPML O; D; Y
Burzynska (2021) POP-D; PR; CL; MIG language
Okafor, Adeola, & x x x GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; World Natural Disasters and OLS; Panel-FE O; D; P; Y
Folarin (2021) POP-D; Dist; PR; CL; GEOG; Trade
COL; TRADE; EVENT
Santana-Gallego and x x x MIG; REL; EVENT; OSOC World Migration OLS; PPML; Dynamic panel OY; DY; P
Paniagua (2022) data (GMM)
Panzera et al. (2021) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; Europe World Heritage Sites Bayesian multilevel model O; D
POP-D; GEOG; WHS
J. Y. Park and Jang x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; PR; CL; World General determinants OLS O; D;Y
(2014) TRADE; INF; OSOC; AIR;
WHS; ENV;
S. Y. Park and Pan (2018) x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; PR; AIR; USA Direct flight route PPML
OSOC
(Continues)
Outb-
oud/
Inte- Diffe- Inbo-
Patuelli et al. (2013) x x x Dist; GDP-D; GDP-O; POP-D; Italy World Heritage Sites Negative binomial model: O; D; P; Y
POP-O; PR; GEOG; INF; two-way fixed effects (FE)
OSOC; SEC; WHS; CUL and spatial filtering
augmented model
Petit and Seetaram x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; PR; CL, OECD Cultural preferences OLS and PPML Y
(2019) COL; CUL
Pompili et al. (2019) x x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; GDP-D; Italy General determinants Spatial Durbin Model
POP-D; INF; GEOG; AIR; (quasi-maximum
likelihood)
Priego et al. (2015) x x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; BORDER; Spain Climate change OLS Y
GEOG; CLIM; WHS; EVENT
Provenzano (2020) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; EU28 Migration OLS D; Y
COL; CUR; MIG
Provenzano and Baggio x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; BORDER; EU28 Migration OLS O; D; Y
(2017) CL; COL; MIG;
Puah et al. (2019) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; PR Vietnam General determinants OLS; Panel-RE
Quandt and Baumol x x GDP-O; POP-O; OSOC; ECON; USA Transport modes Linear regression
(1966) TC; TDIS;
Quandt and Young x x GDP-D; GDP-O; POP-O; USA General determinants Linear and Non Linear
(1969) POP-D; OSOC; ECON; TC regression
Rey et al. (2011) x x x Dist; GDP-D; GDP-O; TC; PR; Spain Low-cost airlines GLS-RE; Balestra and D; Y
INF; AIR; EVENT GMM-DIFF procedure
(Continues)
1393
1394
Outb-
oud/
Inte- Diffe- Inbo-
Rosselló and x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; BORDER; World Climate change OLS O; D; Y
Santana-Gallego CL; GEOG; COL; CLIM
(2014)
Rosselló et al. (2017) x x x Dist; GDP-D; POP-D; BORDER; World Infectious diseases OLS OY
CL; FTA; COL; POL; SEC;
CLIM; WHS; REL; OSOC;
EVENT
Rosselló et al. (2020) x x x GDP-D; POP-D; SEC; FTA, World Natural disasters OLS P; OY
EVENT
Saayman et al. (2016) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; World Trade Agreements OLS; PPML O; D; Y; OY;
POP-D; TRADE; FTA; DY
BORDER; COL; CL; CURR;
PR
Santana-Gallego and x x x GDP-D; SEC; POL Africa Terrorism and security PPML OY; P
Fourie (2020) threats
Santana-Gallego et al. x x x CU; FTA European Union/ Common currency Panel-FE P; OY; DY
(2016) OECD (Euro)
Santeramo and Morelli x x x Dist; GDP-O; POP-O; INF; Italy General determinants panel data quantile
(2016) OSOC; CURR; VISA; regression and PPML
Saunders et al. (1981) x x Dist; POP-O; OSOC; ENV; USA Recreation activities Linear
regression/forecasting
(Continues)
Outb-
oud/
Inte- Diffe- Inbo-
Seetanah et al. (2010) x x x Dist; GDP-D; GDP-O; EX; PR; South Africa General determinants FMOLS Y
BORDER; CL; INF; CURR;
POL
Siskos and Darvidou x x x Dist; GDP-O European countries General determinants OLS
(2018)
Smith (1985) x x Dist; POP-O; OSOC; USA Distance decay and Linear multivariate
willingness to travel regression
Smith and Brown (1981) x x x Dist; POP-O; POP-D; Canada Directional bias Linear regression
W. Song (2010) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; World Olympics OLS O; D; P; Y
POP-D; BORDER; CL; GEOG;
FTA; COL; CURR; EVENT
Sun and Lin (2019) x x x GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; World Distance Spatial Durbin Model (OLS)
POP-D; BORDER; GEOG;
TRADE; INF; OSOC; ECON;
VISA; AIR; MIG
Tang (2021) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; Japan Trade facilitation OLS; 2SLS O; Y
POP-D; POL; INF; OSOC;
FTA
Taplin and Qiu (1997) x x Dist; POP-O; POP-D; TC Australia General determinants genetic algorithm O
Tavares and Leitao x x x Dist; GDP-O; EX; BORDER; CL; Brazil General determinants OLS and Dynamic panel
(2017) data (GMM)
Tsui et al. (2018) x x x Dist; GDP-O; INF; TRADE; New Zealand Economic policies OLS; Panel-FE; Panel-RE
VISA; AIR; EVENT uncertainties
Ulucak et al. (2020) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D, EX; PR; Turkey General determinants Continuously updated fully
POL; ECON modified (CupFM);
continuously updated
bias-corrected (CupBC)
(Continues)
1395
1396
Outb-
oud/
Inte- Diffe- Inbo-
Velasquez and Oh x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; PR; EX; Peru General determinants Panel-RE
(2013) BORDER; CL; VISA
Vierhaus (2019) x x x Dist, GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; World Mega events OLS O; D; Y
POP-D; PR; CL; COL;
BORDER; TRADE; CURR;
FTA; GEOG; EVENT
Vietze (2012) x x x Dist; GDP-D; GDP-O; PR; USA Religion OLS; Panel-RE O, D, Y
BORDER; CL; GEOG; POL;
SEC; VISA; REL;
Vitová et al. (2019) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; Small Islands General determinants Dynamic panel data (GMM) Y
POP-D; TRADE; PR; CL; Development
COL; POL; INF: CLIM States
Voltes-Dorta et al. (2016) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; Spain Terrorism OLS Y
POP-D; BORDER; GEOG;
EVENT; SEC
Waqas et al. (2021) x x x GDP-O; POP-O; POL; SEC World Income elasticity OLS; PPML P; DY
D. Xu and Dong (2020) x x x Dist; POP-D; POP-O; GDP-D; China Air Pollution OLS; 2SLS-IV; GMM-IV O; D; Y
GDP-O; ER; TRADE; VISA;
INF; CLIM; ENV; OSOC
L. Xu et al. (2019) x x x Dist; GDP-D; GDP-O; POP-O; China General determinants OLS; FGLS; IV O
PR; TRADE; POL; CUL;
EVENT; FTA; ECON
Yang and Wong (2012) x x x Dist; GDP-O; EX; PR; CUL; China Cultural Distance OLS; FGLS
EVENT
Yang et al. (2010) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; China World Heritage Sites OLS; Panel-FE O; D
EX; GEOG; INF; SEC; WHS;
CUL; OSOC; EVENT
(Continues)
Outb-
oud/
Inte- Diffe- Inbo-
Yang et al. (2019a) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-D; World Cultural Distance PPML O; D; Y
POP-O; BORDER; CL;
TRADE; OSOC; COL; GEOG;
SEC; WHS; CUL;
Yang et al. (2019b) x x Dist; GDP-O; GEOG; INF; China Transport modes Negative binomial model
OSOC; WHS; AIR; CUL;
Yazdi and Khanalizadeh x x x GDP-O; PR; EX; AIR; EVENT USA General determinants Dynamic panel data
(2017) (ARDL)
Yerdelen-Tatoglu and x x x Dist, GDP-O; GDP-D; EX; PR; World General determinants Maximum likelihood O; D; Y
Gul (2019) GEOG; TRADE
Zhang and Findlay x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; BORDER; APEC members Air transport policies OLS
(2014) CL; GEOG; AIR
Zhang et al. (2019) x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; World Cultural values Panel-RE
POP-D; OSOC; CUL; POL
Zhou et al. (2019) x x x x Dist; GDP-O; GDP-D; POP-O; China Air pollution PPML O; Y
PR; EX; ENV;
1397
Table A.2 Independent variables (codes and definitions)
CODE Definition
Dist Distance (geographical, travel distance,. . . )
GDP-O Gross domestic Product or other income measure (also in per capita terms) at
origin
GDP-D Gross domestic Product or other income measure (also in per capita terms) at
destination
POP-O Population (or equivalent measure such as density) at origin
POP_D Population (or equivalent measure such as density) at destination
TC Variables related to travel costs (fares, ticket prices, . . . )
EX Variables related to exchange rate (in nominal or real terms), volatility, exchange
rate regimes
CL Common language, official language, spoken languages
COL Colonial relationship
CUL Cultural affinity (cultural products, cultural distance,. . . )
PR Variables related to price indicators (CPI, PPP,. . . )
BORDER Common border, contiguity, neighboring countries,. . .
REL Variables related to religion (religion affinity, major religion,. . . )
TRADE Variables related to trade (export, imports, total trade, trade openness,. . . )
FTA Free Trade Agreements, trade blocks
CURR Sharing a common currency, official currency,. . .
CLIM Variables related to climate (temperature, precipitation,..)
GEOG Geographical variables (coastline, beaches, island, landlocked, area,. . . )
WHS World Heritage Sites
EVENT Special events (SARS; mega-events, crises, natural disasters, Arab Spring,. . . )
MIG Variables related to migration
INF Tourism and transport infrastructures (roads, ports, hotels, casinos,. . . )
AIR Variables related to air connectivity (direct flights, influence of LCC,
accessibility,. . . )
SEC Security issues (terrorism, crime, armed conflicts,. . . )
ENV Environmental indicators (emissions, global warming. . . )
VISA Visa policy
POL Political issues related to government effectiveness and institutional quality
ECON Other economic variables (military spending, taxes, unemployment, public
spending. . . )
OSOC Other sociological and cultural variables (internet users, mobile phone users,
education level, life expectancy,. . . )
TIME Time Zone
Table A.3 Elasticities of standard gravity variables
Sample Elasticities
Preferred Dependent
Author (Year) Countries Period estimation method variable Pop-O Pop-D GDP-O GDP-D GDPpc-O GDPpc-D Dist
Adeola and Evans From to 40 African 1996–2017 Dynamic panel data log of tourist 0.92 0.97 −1.18
(2019) countries (O,D) arrivals
Adeola and Evans From 40 main origins to 1996–2016 Dynamic Panel Data log of tourist 1.15 0.64 −3.09
(2020) 40 African countries arrivals
Akter et al. (2017) From 30 origin countries 2009–2012 Panel-RE log of tourist 0.63 0.44 −0.91
to Bangladesh arrivals
Akter et al. (2017) From 30 origin countries 2009–2012 Panel-corrected log of tourist 0.52 0.31 −0.66
to Bangladesh standard error arrivals
Altaf (2021) From 19 main origin to 2000–2018 2SLS(O) log of tourist 0.73 0.46 2.08 −0.59
India arrivals
Alvarez-Diaz et al. From/to 19 Spanish 2016 Spatial autoregressive log of domestic trips 0.68 1.09 1.15 0
(2017) regions
Archibald et al. (2008) From Canada, USA, 1980–2002 Dynamic panel (O; D; log tourist arrivals −0.07 0.1 0.17
Europe and Caribbean Y)
to 22 Caribbean
destinations
Artal-Tur et al. (2016) From 188 origin to 179 2000 & 2010 PPML (OY; DY) tourist arrivals −0.7
destination countries
Balli et al. (2013) From 81 origin countries 1995–2010 Dynamic panel data log of tourist 1.07 0.57
to Turkey (Y) arrivals
Balli et al. (2016) From 34 OECD countries 1995–2010 OLS (Y) log of tourist 0.49 0.57 −0.19
to 52 middle/low arrivals
income countries
Balli et al. (2018) From 6 Gulf Cooperation 1995–2013 Panel FE (P; Y) log of tourist 0.21 −1.01
Council countries to 54 arrivals
non GCC destinations
(Continues)
1399
1400
Sample Elasticities
Preferred Dependent
Balli et al. (2020) From 6 Gulf Cooperation 1995–2013 Dynamic panel data log of tourist −0.08 0.51
Council countries to 54 (P; Y) arrivals
destinations
Breda and Oddo (2019) From 20 main origin 1997–2015 Panel FE (O; Y) log of tourist 2.66 0.52 −0.2
countries to Italy arrivals
(quarterly)
Breda and Oddo (2019) From 20 main origin 1997–2015 Panel FE (O; Y) log of tourist 2.43 0.54 0.04
countries to Italy receipts
(quarterly)
Cevik (2021) From 172 origins to 222 1995–2017 PPML (O; D; Y) tourist arrivals 0.06 0.09 0.13 0.13 −0.23
destinations
Chasapopoulos et al. From 31 origin countries 2001–2010 Dynamic panel data log of tourist 0.17 −0.13
(2014) to Greece arrivals
Cheung and Saha From 42 origin countries 2010 OLS log of tourist 0.72 1.14 −0.34
(2015) to Australia arrivals
Chow and Tsui (2019) From Russia to 15 Chinese 2001–2013 Panel-FE (D) log of tourist −7.01 0.99 0.5
prefectures arrivals
Cró et al. (2021) From 13 main origins to 2005–2018 Dynamic panel data log of tourist 1.22 −0.16
Madeira arrivals
Culiuc (2014) From/to 204 countries 1999–2009 Panel-FE (P, Y) log of tourist 0.09 −0.57 0.61 1.05
arrivals
Czaika and Neumayer From/to Worldwide origin 1995–2013 PPML (OY; DY) tourist arrivals −0.56
(2020) and destinations
De Vita (2014) From/to 27 developed 1980–2011 Dynamic panel data log of tourist 0.75 0.25 0.78 0.2 −0.78
countries (Y) arrivals
Deluna and Jeon (2014) From 24 origin countries 2001–2012 Panel RE log of tourist −0.19 0.41 −0.38
to Philippines arrivals
(Continues)
Sample Elasticities
Preferred Dependent
Dropsy et al. (2020) From/to 142 countries 1995–2015 2SLS-IV log of tourist 0.91 0.93 −1.73
arrivals
Eilat and Einav (2004) From 36 rich origin to 36 1985–1998 Multinomial Logit (O; log tourist arrivals 1.29 0.81 −0.98
rich destinations D; P; Y) (% population of
origin)
Eilat and Einav (2004) From 36 rich origins to 1985–1998 Multinomial Logit (O; log tourist arrivals 0.41 1.37 −0.92
rest of destinations D; P; Y) (% population of
origin)
Eric et al. (2020) From 88 origin countries 2002–2014 PPML (P; Y) log of passenger 0.86 0.41 −0.42
to Kenya flow
Eryigit et al. (2010) From main 11 origins to 1995–2005 Panel-RE log of tourist 1.05 1.47
Turkey arrivals
Fourie and Santana From/to 200 countries 1995–2006 OLS (O; D; Y) log of tourist 0.03 −0.07 0.27 0.17 −1.48
(2011) arrivals
Fourie and Santana From/to 159 countries 1995–2008 OLS (O; D; Y) log of tourist −0.06 −0.01 0.17 0.31 −1.54
(2013a) arrivals
Fourie and Santana From/to 175 countries 1995–2008 Dynamic panel data log of tourist 0.72 0.28 −0.68
(2013b) (Y) arrivals
Fourie and From 203 origin countries 1995–2013 OLS (O;Y) log of tourist 0.6
Santana-Gallego to South Africa arrivals
(2017)
Fourie et al. (2015) From/to 164 1995–2010 OLS (OY, DY) log of tourist −1.5
origin/destination arrivals
countries
Fourie et al. (2016) From/to 172 1995–2010 OLS (O; D; Y) log of tourist 0.21 0.65 −1.52
origin/destination arrivals
countries
(Continues)
1401
1402
Sample Elasticities
Preferred Dependent
Galli et al. (2016) From 108 2012 OLS log of tourist 0.57 −0.34 −0.17
origin-destination pairs arrivals
to 13 Brazilian airports
Gani and Clemes From 24 main origins to 2004-2013 Panel-FE (O) log of tourist −0.12 225.35 0.55 1.56 −0.33
(2021) New Zealand arrivals
Gavriilidis (2021) From 167 origins to 39 2015 OLS (O; D) log of tourist 0.45 1.55 −0.72
destinations arrivals
Genç (2013) From 201 origin countries 1981–2006 Panel FE (O) log of tourist 0.23 1.81 −1.25
to New Zealand arrivals
Ghalia et al. (2019) 131 origin countries to 34 2005–2014 PPML (O; D; Y) tourist arrivals 0.61 0.62 0 0.02 −0.82
worldwide destinations
Ghani (2016) From 171 origin countries 2012 OLS log of tourist 1.05 0.97 −2.31
to Malaysia arrivals
Ghani (2019a) From/to 151 countries 2002–2012 OLS (O; D; Y) log of tourist 0.61 0.85 −1.7
arrivals
Ghani (2019b) From/to 151 countries 1995–2012 OLS log of tourist 0.8 0.7 0.76 0.67 −1.56
arrivals
Gil-Pareja et al. (2007a) From G-7 countries to 156 2001–2003 OLS-FE (O; D) log tourist arrivals −0.79
destinations
Gil-Pareja et al. (2007b) From/to 20 OECD 1995–2002 Panel FE (P; Y) log tourist arrivals 1.37 0.6 0.18 0.88
countries
Görmüs and Göçe From 32 origin countries 2000–2006 Panel-RE log of tourist 0.17 −0.79
(2010) to Turkey arrivals
Gosh (2020) From 15 major countries of 1991–2018 Common correlated log of tourist 0.08 0.41 0.1 −0.11
Asia to Australia effects (O, D, Y) arrivals
Gouveia et al. (2017) From 18 origin countries 2007–2014 Hausman-Taylor (O; log of international 15.04 8.83 −2.16
to Portugal Y) passengers
(Continues)
Sample Elasticities
Preferred Dependent
Groizard and From 186 origin countries 1995–2013 OLS (O; D; Y) log of tourist 0.32 0.97 0.66 1.03 −1.41
Santana-Gallego to 177 destinations arrivals
(2018)
Groizard and From 186 origin countries 1995–2013 Panel-FE (P;Y) log of tourist 0.37 1.06 0.68 1.03
Santana-Gallego to 177 destinations arrivals
(2018)
Guardia et al. (2014) From/to 17 Spanish 2004–2008 Panel RE (Y) log of trips 0.86 0.78 1.88 0.31 −2.35
regions
Hanafiah & Harun From 7 main origin to 1993-2007 OLS log of tourist 0.38 0.46 −1.08
(2010) Malaysia arrivals
Harb and Bassil From/to 35 OECD 1995–2015 OLS (O;D;Y) log of tourist 0.6 0.93 −0.86
(2020a) countries arrivals
Harb and Bassil From/to 35 OECD 1995–2015 Common Correlated log of tourist 1.08 0.43
(2020a) countries Effects (P;Y) arrivals
Harb and Bassil From/to 35 OECD 1995–2015 PPML (O; D; Y) tourist arrivals 0.44 −0.71 −0.4
(2020b) countries
X. Huang et al. (2020) From 41 origin countries 2008–2016 OLS (O) log of tourist 0.83 0.15 0
to China arrivals
C. H. Huang et al. From 19 main origin 2005 Panel FE (O) log of overnight 6.07 1.52
(2012) countries/regions to stays
Macau
Ibragimov et al. (2021) From 108 origin countries 2008–2018 Panel-RE (P; Y) log of tourist 0.42 −0.01 −1.45
to 4 Central Asian arrivals
countries
Jong et al. (2020) From 10 origin countries 2010–2016 Panel-FE (O) log of tourist 0.43 2.16 −0.81
to Saba (Borneo) arrivals
Kaplan and Aktas From 92 origin countries 1996–2014 PPML tourist arrivals 0.87 −0.26
(2016) to Turkey
(Continues)
1403
Sample Elasticities
1404
Preferred Dependent
Karaman (2016) From 100 origin countries 2000–2013 OLS (Y) log of tourist 0.53 0.38 −0.67
to Turkey arrivals
Karaman (2016) From 100 origin countries 2000–2013 Dynamic panel data log of tourist 0.51 0.41
to Turkey (Y) arrivals
Keum (2010) From/to 28 main trading 1990–2002 Panel-RE log of departures 2.26 0.77 −2.07
partners to/From South
Korea
Keum (2010) From/to 28 main trading 1990–2002 Panel-RE log of arrivals 0.69 0.47 −1.99
partners to/From South
Korea
Khadaroo and From/to 28 worldwide 1990–2000 Dynamic panel data log of tourist 0.3 0.81 −0.22
Seetanah (2008) countries (Y) arrivals
Khalid, Okafor, & Aziz From/to 188 countries 1995–2015 OLS (O;D;Y) log of tourist 0.18 0.08 0.76 1.2 −1.75
(2020) arrivals
Khalid, Okafor, & Aziz From/to 188 countries 1995–2015 Panel-FE (P;Y) log of tourist 0.35 −0.1 0.8 1
(2020) arrivals
Khalid, Okafor, & From/to 200 countries 1995–2010 OLS (O; D; Y) log of tourist 0.58 1.21 0.71 1.37 −1.68
Shafiullah (2020) arrivals
Khalid, Okafor, & From/to 200 countries 1995–2010 Panel-FE (P;Y) log of tourist 0.5 1.1 0.66 1.09
Shafiullah (2020) arrivals
Khalid, Okafor, & From 171 origins to 163 1995–2015 PPML (O; D; Y) tourist arrivals 1.36 −0.17 0.96 −0.12 −1.22
Burzynska (2021) destination
Khalid, Okafor, & From 164 origins to 157 1995–2015 PPML (O; D; Y) tourist arrivals 1.37 −0.12 1.18 0.17 −1.42
Sanusi (2021) destinations
Kosnan et al. (2013) From 24 origin countries 1998–2009 Panel RE log of tourist 1.17 1.3 −0.79
to Malaysia receipts
Leitao (2010) From 19 origins to 1995–2006 Dynamic panel data log of arrivals 0.34 0.33 −0.34
Portugal (Y)
(Continues)
Sample Elasticities
Preferred Dependent
Author (Year) Countries Period estimation method variable Pop-OPop-DGDP-OGDP-DGDPpc-OGDPpc-DDist
Lien et al. (2014) From 31 origin countries 2004–2010 PPML (O;Y) tourist arrivals 0.47 0.62 −0.83
to China
Liou et al. (2020) From 19 main origins to 2001–2017 Panel-RE log of tourist −0.58 25.16 1.7 −4.91 −2.74
Taiwan arrivals
Llorca-Vivero (2008) From G-7 countries to 134 average 2001–2003OLS (O; D) log of tourist 0.71 0.56 −0.23 0.65 −0.67
Lopez et al. (2021) From 15 origins to 2005–2017 Panel-FE tourist arrivals 0 0 3.26
Switzerland
Lorde et al. (2016) From US, Europe, Canada 1980–2008 Dynamic panel data log of tourist 0.27 −0.37 0.25 0.29 −0.05
and Caribbean to 18 arrivals
Caribbean destinations
Malaj and Kapiki From 19 origin countries 2005–2015 Panel-RE (O) log of tourist 0.98 −0.83
(2016) to Greece arrivals
Marrocu and Paci From/to 107 Italian 2001–2010 OLS log of tourist 0.07 −0.39 0.92 1.05 −0.78
(2013) provinces arrivals
Massidda and Etzo 20 italian regions 1998–2007 Dynamic panel data log of tourist 0.43 0.71 1.43 −0.08
(2012) (Y) arrivals
Mata and From/to 17 Spanish 2001–2007 OLS log of monetary 0.86 −2
Llano-Verduras regions flows
(2012)
McKay and From/to 158 countries 2010 Two-stage Heckman log of tourist 0.72 0.55 0.61 0.32 −1.03
Tekleselassie (2018) equation departures
Montant (2020) From 41 origins to French 2007–2017 PPML (O; Y) hotel sector −0.11
Polynesia revenues
Muhammad and From 30 origin countries 2000–2004 Panel FE (O) log of tourist 3.44
Andrews (2016) to Uganda arrivals
(Continues)
1405
1406
Sample Elasticities
Preferred Dependent
Muñoz et al. (2021) From/to 17 Spanish 2011–2015 OLS hotel overnights 0.97 1.15 −0.54
regions
Neumayer and From Western origins to 1995–2013 PPML (P; Y) tourist arrivals 0.26 1.63 1.36 0.94
Plümper (2016) Islamic destinations
Okafor and Khalid From 200 origin countries 1995–2013 OLS (O; D; Y) log of tourist 0.18 0.07 0.76 1.2 −1.75
(2021) to 57 destinations arrivals
Okafor and Khalid From 200 origin countries 1995–2013 Panel-FE (P;Y) log of tourist 0.35 −0.1 0.8 1
(2021) to 57 destinations arrivals
Okafor et al. (2018) From/to 200 1995–2015 PPML (O; D; Y) tourist arrivals 0.88 0.39 0.77 0.2 −1.11
origin/destination
countries
Okafor, Tan, & Khalid From China to 137 1995–2018 PPML (D) tourist arrivals 4.52 2.91 1.42
(2021) destinations
Okafor, Khalid, & From 166 origin to 30 1995–2010 2SLS (O; D; Y) log of tourist 0.32 −1.52 −0.62 0.94
Burzynska (2021) OECD destinations arrivals
Okafor, Adeola, & From/to 222 countries 1995–2015 OLS (O;D;Y) log of tourist 0.21 0.62 0.78 1.07 −1.66
Folarin (2021) arrivals
Okafor, Adeola, & From/to 222 countries 1995–2015 Panel-FE (P;Y) log of tourist 0.16 1.04 0.67 1.01
Folarin (2021) arrivals
Panzera et al. (2021) From/to 20 European 2017 Bayesian multilevel log of tourist 0.33 0.09 0.63 0.36 −2.12
regions mode l(O; D) arrivals
J. Y. Park and Jang From/to 30 worldwide 1995–2009 OLS (O; D; Y) log of tourist 1.75 0.76 −1.23
(2014) countries arrivals
Patuelli et al. (2013) From/to 20 Italian regions 1998–2009 Poisson negative log of tourist −0.12 0.65 0.18 −2.44
binomial (P; Y) arrivals
Petit and Seetaram From/to 12 OECD 2002–2012 PPML (Y) tourist receipts 0.39 0.61 −0.5
(2019) countries
(Continues)
Sample Elasticities
Preferred Dependent
Priego et al. (2015) From/to 50 Spanish 2005–2007 OLS (Y) log of tourist 0.75 0.38 −0.9
regions arrivals
Provenzano (2020) From/to 28 EU countries 2000–2015 OLS (D; Y) log of tourist 0.83 0.77 0.66 0.35 −0.64
arrivals
Provenzano and From/to EU-28 2000–2012 OLS (O; D; Y) log of tourist 0.57 0.63 −0.61
Baggio (2017) arrivals
Puah et al. (2019) From to 10 origin 2011–2017 OLS (O) log of tourist 0.45 1.04 −0.43
countries to Vietnam arrivals
Rey et al. (2011) From 10 EU countries to 6 2000–2009 Dynamic panel data log of tourist 1.11
Spanish regions (D; Y) arrivals (% origin
population)
Rosselló and From/to 178 countries 1995–2010 OLS (O; D; Y) log of tourist 0.4 0.55 −1.59
Santana-Gallego arrivals
(2014)
Rosselló et al. (2017) From 208 origin countries 2000–2013 OLS (OY) log of tourist 0.65 0.4 −1.28
to 196 destination arrivals
countries
Rossello et al. (2020) From/to 171 countries 1995–2013 HDFE (P; OY) log of tourist 1.04 1.04
arrivals
Saayman et al. (2016) From 51 origin/destination 1995–2010 PPML (OY; DY) tourist arrivals −0.87
countries worldwide
Santana-Gallego and From/to 171 1995–2016 Panel FE (P; Y) log of tourist 0.89 0.86
Fourie (2020) origin/destinations arrivals
Santeramo and Morelli From 33 origin country to 1998–2010 PPML tourist arrivals 0.06 0 −0.1
(2016) Italy
(Continues)
1407
1408
Sample Elasticities
Preferred Dependent
Seetanah et al. (2010) From 38 origins worldwide 1985–2000 Fully modified OLS log of arrivals 1.29 0.27 −0.23
to South Africa (Y)
Siskos and Darvidou From EU to 6 BSEC 2006–2016 OLS log of trips 0.74 −0.89
(2018) countries
Song (2010) From 88 worldwide 1982–2008 OLS (O;D;Y) log of arrivals −0.02 1.34 0.29 0.42 −1.53
countries
Tang (2021) From 34 origin to Japan 2011–2017 OLS (O; Y) log of tourist 0.68 −14.88 0.73 0.33 −2.23
arrivals
Tavares and Leitao From 20 main origins to 2004–2013 Dynamic panel data tourist arrivals −0.01 −12.83
(2017) Brazil
Tsui et al. (2018) From 8 main origins to 2008–2015 Dynamic panel data log of business 0.02
New Zealand (P) visitors
Ulucak et al. (2020) From 25 main origin to 1998–2017 CupFM log of tourist 0.81 0.1 −0.02
Turkey arrivals
Velasquez and Oh From 59 origin countries 1990–2011 Panel-RE log of tourist 0.64 0.04 −0.52
(2013) to Peru arrivals
Vierhaus (2019) From 169 origin countries 1982–2014 OLS (O; D; Y) log of tourist 0.05 0.21 0.25 0.37 −1.25
to 156 destinations arrivals
Vietze (2012) From 208 origin countries 2001–2005 OLS (O, D, Y) log of tourist 0.93 −2.2 −0.97
to USA arrivals
Vitová et al. (2019) From worldwide origin to 1995–2014 Dynamic panel data log of tourist 0.07 −0.03 0.07 0.05 −0.17
56 Small Islands (Y) arrivals
Developing States
Voltes-Dorta et al. From/to Spanish regions 2008–2013 OLS (Y) log of domestic 0.68 0.79 1.08 0.34 −0.8
(2016) tourism
movements
Waqas et al. (2021) From/to 192 countries 1995–2016 PPML (P; DY) tourist arrivals 0.8 0.91
(Continues)
Sample Elasticities
Preferred Dependent
D. Xu and Dong (2020) From 13 origin countries 2010–2016 OLS (O; D; Y) log of tourist 0.73 −2.32 −0.91 2.02 −1.34
to 30 Chinese provinces arrivals
L. Xu et al. (2019) From 21 origin countries 1995–2014 IV(O) log of tourist 0.75 1.7 0.46 −1.4
to China arrivals
Yang and Wong (2012) From 18 main origin 1980–2007 FGLS(Y) log of tourist 2.8 −2.46
countries to China arrivals

Yang et al. (2010) From 9 origin countries to 20002–2005 OLS (O; Y) log of overnight 0.66 0.29 −1.42
26 Chinese provinces stays
Yang et al. (2019a) From/to 94 worldwide 1995–2012 PPML (O; D; Y) tourist arrivals 1.93 0.89 0.92 0.41 −0.89
countries
Yazdi and From 14 major origin 1995–2014 Dynamic panel data log of tourist 0.33
Khanalizadeh countries to USA arrivals
(2017)
Yerdelen-Tatoglu and From 30 origin to 14 main 2008–2016 Maximum likelihood tourist arrivals 1.06 −0.78 −0.23
Gul (2019) destinations (O; D; Y)
Zhang and Findlay From/to 19 countries 2011 OLS log of tourist 0.63 0.32 −1.35
(2014) arrivals
Zhang et al. (2019) From 81 origin to 32 1995–2008 Panel-RE log of tourist 0.82 0.48 0.5 0.29 −1.53
Zhou et al. (2019) From/to 31 Chinese 2005–2016 PPML (O;Y) tourist arrivals 0 0 0
provinces and 24 major
origin countries to
Beijing
Note: Estimated elasticities and set of Fixed Effects are presented for the preferred estimation method. Dark color implies that the coefficient is not significant.
1409

Journal of Economic Surveys - 2022 - Rossell Nadal - Gravity Models For Tourism Demand Modeling Empirical Review and

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Journal of Economic Surveys - 2022 - Rossell Nadal - Gravity Models For Tourism Demand Modeling Empirical Review and

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

14676419, 2022, 5, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/joes.12502 by Readcube (Labtiva Inc.), Wiley Online Library on [06/12/2022].

Gravity models for tourism demand modeling:

Jaume Rosselló Nadal María Santana Gallego

Department of Applied Economics,

1358 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/joes J Econ Surv. 2022;36:1358–1409.

2 RESEARCH HISTORY AND THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS

2.1 A short history about the application of the gravity model in

TA B L E 1 Presence of word “gravity” in tourism journals

2.2 Theoretical underpinnings for the gravity equation in tourism

3 LITERATURE SELECTION AND DATA

3.1 Key literature selection

In order to identify gravity model specifications on tourism, we conducted a broad-scale search

3.2 Dependent variable

TA B L E 2 Independent variables and use frequency

3.3 Independent variables

3.4 Geographical context and main research topics

4 MODELING AND METHODOLOGY

4.1 Structural gravity model

4.2 Econometric methods

TA B L E 3 Econometric method a use frequency

5 REVIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

5.1 Expected impact of economic size and distance

TA B L E 4 Main estimate elasticities

5.2 Other explanatory variables

Dependent variable characteristics

OSOC; POL internet users (GMM)

CL; TRADE; COL; CURR;

Dependent variable characteristics

POL;D; BORDER; CL; COL; political risk Hausman-Taylor; PPML

Dependent variable characteristics

TRADE; CUL; POL; VISA;

Dependent variable characteristics

Dependent variable characteristics

Dependent variable characteristics

Table A.2 Independent variables (codes and definitions)

countries to China arrivals

You might also like