Circular tourism economy in European Union between competitiveness, risk and sustainability

Tourism is an important sector of the world economy, significantly contributing to the creation of GDP in certain countries. Despite the positive effects recorded at the economic and social levels, researchers began to highlight the negative externalities generated by tourism on the environment, via air, soil and water degradation. Structural Equation Model (SEM) framework with SPSS—AMOS 22.0 software was used to investigate the total, direct and indirect effects of the independent variable on the dependent variable (Municipal waste) considering the intervening effects of the mediators. This method has been employed in the case of all 30 European countries under focus. As independent variables of SEM, after the numerous variants testes and analysis of the model, we used as follows: TTCI, average stays, HDI, GDP, tourism in GDP (%), PM 10, PM 2.5, CO2, Consumption of renewable resources (%) and Circular material uses rate (CMR) (%). The main conclusions of the study regard, on the one hand, the negative impact that both the increase of average stay/tourists’ arrivals/overnight stays and the decrease of tourism competitiveness rank (from the last to the first rank) have on waste management and environment pollution. On the other hand, the improvement of circular economy indicators (consumption of renewable resources and circular material uses rate) has a positive impact on waste management and environment pollution in European countries. [Display omitted] •The tourism activity has dramatical influence on waste management and environment pollution.•Economical and social development has a positive impact on waste management.•There are differences between status of countries (EU15 – EU27/28 – non EU) regarding the transition to low carbon economy.