The empirical linkages from tourism, governance, and FDI have been quantified on CO2 emission and energy use over 2002-2014 for a panel of 13 Muslim countries. To this end, we have examined the data for cross-sectional dependence (CD) and panel heterogeneity and employed panel algorithms, which account for both CD and panel heterogeneity. The results from Pedroni, Westerlund, and Kao tests supported the existence of a cointegration association between the chosen variables. In the CO2 model, we observed that tourism positively, and governance negatively, influences the CO2 emission. However, in the case of the energy model, the results of tourism pose a negative relationship, and governance indicates a positive relationship with energy use. The results supported the pollution haven phenomenon, finance, and energy triggered pollution in the study area. Further, the research supported a two-way causality between tourism and CO2, where there is a unilateral causality from governance to CO2. Similarly, a unidirectional causality was obtained from energy towards tourism. Lastly, the key policy recommendations based on the outcomes of the study are encouraging clean energy investment, enhancing good governance, and sustainable tourism development for improving environmental quality.
Keywords: DK estimator; FDI; Governance; Muslim countries; Tourism.