Sustainable Tourism and Poverty Reduction in Selected ASEAN Member Countries

Abstract

Examining the impact of revenues from the tourism sector on poverty reduction in selected members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), including Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore, is the primary objective of this study. The Bayesian Structural Time Series (BSTS) model and the regression kink design (RKD or RK design) were employed to identify the causal effects between tourism revenues and the poverty headcount ratio during 2009–2019. The main conclusion from the analysis is that the relationship between tourism revenue and poverty reduction (in the form of the poverty headcount ratio) in Malaysia and Singapore have similar patterns. In contrast, the pattern of the impact of tourism revenues on the poverty headcount ratio in Thailand is different from the other two countries. For Singapore and Malaysia, increasing tourism revenue can reduce the poverty headcount ratio in the early stages. Nevertheless, after a while, increasing tourism revenue in later stages will not reduce the poverty headcount ratio. On the other hand, Thailand’s tourism revenue can reduce the poverty headcount ratio with time lags. However, in the early stages, Thailand’s tourism revenue could not reduce the poverty headcount ratio.