Tourism in a Warming World: Climate Change and Inbound Expenditure in Leading Tourism Economies

Climate change is a global risk reshaping tourism through destination attractiveness, service continuity, and travel risk perception. Yet tourism research has largely focused on traditional determinants such as income, price competition, and global integration, while multidimensional evidence on climate impacts remains limited. This study examines the link between climate change and tourism inbound expenditure in 12 leading tourism economies over 2004–2019. Climate change is measured using a PCA-based index combining per capita CO2 emissions with temperature and precipitation volatility. This approach captures both average climate conditions and fluctuations in the climate regime. MMQR is employed to account for heterogeneous effects, with economic size, exchange rate, and globalization included as controls. Results show that increases in the climate change index significantly reduce tourism inbound expenditure. Robustness is confirmed by PCSE and FGLS estimators, while causal linkages are assessed using the HPJ test. By showing that multidimensional climate pressure constrains the expenditure performance of major tourism economies, the study extends the application of destination resilience theory to a macroeconomic setting. It also highlights the need to integrate climate adaptation, resilient infrastructure, and ecosystem protection into sustainable tourism planning.