Tourism and solid waste generation in Europe: A panel data assessment of the Environmental Kuznets Curve Italo Arbulú ⇑ , Javier Lozano, Javier Rey-Maquieira Department of Applied Economics, University of the Balearic Islands, Cra.deValldemossa, km 7.5, Palma de Mallorca, Baleares 07122, Spain article info Article history: Received 19 November 2014 Revised 29 March 2015 Accepted 13 April 2015 Available online 17 August 2015 Keywords: Environmental Kuznets Curve Municipal solid waste Waste generation Tourism abstract The relationship between tourism growth and municipal solid waste (MSW) generation has been, until now, the subject of little research. This is puzzling since the tourism sector is an important MSW gener- ator and, at the same time, is willing to avoid negative impacts from MSW mismanagement. This paper aims to provide tools for tourism and MSW management by assessing the effects of tourism volume, tourism quality and tourism specialization on MSW generation in the UE. This is done using the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) framework. The study considers a panel data for 32 European econo- mies in the 1997–2010 periods. Empirical results support the EKC hypothesis for MSW and shows that northern countries tend to have lower income elasticity than less developed countries; furthermore, results confirm a non-linear and significant effect of tourism arrivals, expenditure per tourist and tourism specialization on MSW generation. Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In the last three decades refuse collection and waste disposal industry have been affected by the growing volume of urban solid wastes, which fosters landfill maximum capacity and negative impacts over environmental quality (Nicolli et al., 2010). Improper handling of MSW could cause serious damage to ecosys- tem services 1 by increasing water, soil and air pollution (Rodríguez, 2002; Mor et al., 2006). Furthermore, it may also increase the prob- ability of serious impacts on public health (Al-Khatib et al., 2010; Marchand, 1998) or human safety (Mor et al., 2006). Environmental impacts of MSW generation have increased pressure on public authorities to develop policy options and other mechanisms to deal with this problem (Magrinho et al., 2006; Rotich et al., 2006; Manga et al., 2008; Shekdar, 2009; Lundmark and Stjernström, 2009). The analysis of these strategies and their impact is especially interesting in the case of tourism destinations since tourism inflows constitute an additional source of MSW and the attractiveness of a tourism destination can be affected by waste management (Mathieson and Wall, 1982; Saarinen, 2003; Gidarakos et al., 2006; Radwan et al., 2010; Arbulú et al., 2014). The limitation on land in some tourism destinations (Rey-Maquieira et al., 2005; Gómez et al., 2008), the increasing real costs of garbage disposal and treatment, and the need to avoid a deterioration of destination image have made it even more difficult to manage MSW in tourism areas. This is why one of the major environmental challenges of tourism destinations is the design of appropriate policies aimed to manage the amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) generated by increasing tourist inbound flows (Gidarakos et al., 2006; Holden, 2008; Mateu-Sbert et al., 2013). The cornerstone of successful MSW management is the avail- ability of reliable information about generation (Gidarakos et al., 2006). As some authors noted, most academic evidence on the determinants of waste generation is based on microeconomic stud- ies carried out at a community level (Karousakis, 2006; Bel, 2006; Mazzanti et al., 2006; Mazzanti et al., 2009). This approach often relies on case studies and small datasets and therefore it does not shed light on the determinants of waste generation at a regio- nal and national level. From a macroeconomic point of view, the relationship between environmental degradation and economic growth has received increasing attention and the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis has become a centrepiece of this research. The EKC is a hypothesized relationship between environ- mental degradation and per capita income. The seminar paper of Grossman and Krueger (1995), and later works on the topic, found that for a number of environmental variables, the relationship http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2015.04.014 0956-053X/Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 971 173 000. E-mail addresses: italo.arbulu@uib.es (I. Arbulú), javier.lozano@uib.es (J. Lozano), javier.rey@uib.es (J. Rey-Maquieira). 1 Ecosystem services refer to benefits that humankind receives in a multitude of ways from ecosystems. Waste Management 46 (2015) 628–636 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Waste Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wasman