Tourism and income inequality in sub-Saharan African countries: the role of democracy

Abstract

The tourism literature has largely neglected another important factor that may influence the tourism and income inequality relationship. This factor reflects democratic institutions of the destination country. To contribute to the tourism literature, this study attempts to fill a gap in the corresponding literature by investigating the moderating effect of democracy on the tourism-income inequality nexus for a panel of 23 sub-Sharan African countries over the period 2000-2020. The empirical evidence is based on the panel corrected standard errors (PCSE) estimation technique. The results obtained from our study show that tourism and democracy unconditionally worsen income inequality. Moreover, democracy complements tourism to further undermine income distribution as positive synergies are apparent. Policy implications are discussed.