0000000000114568
AUTHOR
María Santana-gallego
Tourism and migration: Identifying the channels with gravity models
As a result of the role played by migrants in supporting host economies, the interest in understanding the impact of migration is growing. However, the literature remains silent on the channels by which migration affects tourism. The present article aims to isolate the effect of migrant networks on tourism by exploring the role of information, travel costs, and demand for visiting friends and relatives. To this end, a theoretical framework that rests upon a structural gravity model is developed. The model allows not only a better understanding of the relationship between tourism and migration but also to overcome several empirical biases like the omission of multilateral resistance in tour…
Does happiness drive tourism decisions?
This research examines the role that happiness plays in affecting tourism flows. While most previous studies are country-specific, our analysis is performed with panel data on 142 countries from 2005 to 2019. This allows us to implement a structural gravity model that includes both domestic and international tourism flows, which is a novel approach in this branch of the literature. Our empirical strategy enables us to correctly identify happiness when multilateral resistance terms are included. The results show that happiness at a destination is a significant tourist attractor, although the link follows an inverted U-shaped pattern. This suggests that tourists associate happiness with the q…