Preliminary Results on the Employment Effect of Tourism. A meta-analysis

TL;DR

This paper uses meta-analysis to demonstrate that tourism significantly contributes to employment growth, with most studies showing positive effects and correcting for selection bias to reveal a true effect size of approximately 0.9.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive meta-analysis quantifying the positive impact of tourism on employment and addresses publication bias in the literature.

Findings

Most studies show a positive relationship between tourism and employment.

The mean effect size is approximately 0.129, with regression results around 0.9.

Correcting for bias, the true effect size is estimated between 0.85 and 0.97.

Abstract

Unemployment is one of the most important issues in every country. Tourism industry is a dynamic sector which is labor augmented and can create jobs, increase consumption expenditures and offer employment opportunities. In the analysis of this work, the empirical literature on this issue is presented, which indicates that tourism can play a vital and beneficial role to increase employment. This paper uses meta-analysis techniques to investigate the effect of tourism on employment, and finds that the vast majority of the studies reveal a positive relationship. The mean effect of the 36 studies of the meta-sample, using Partial Correlations, is 0.129. This effect is similar to the regression results which is around 0.9, which is positive and statistically significant, clearly indicating that tourism is effective in the creation of jobs and offers employment opportunities. Moreover, evidence of selection bias in the literature in favor of studies which produce positive estimates is found, and once this bias is corrected the true effect is 0.85-0.97.