Armed conflict, military expenditure and international tourism

This article uses a gravity model to explore whether military spending has any moderating effect on the link between armed conflict and international tourist flows. The data set consists of a panel of 188 countries over the period 1995 to 2015. We show that the moderating effect of military spending depends on the levels of relative military spending as well as geographical location. Specifically, in the presence of armed conflict, ‘moderate’ level of relative military spending helps to promote the international tourism attractiveness of destination countries, whereas ‘high’ level of relative military spending cannot reverse the negative impact of armed conflict, it rather fuels the problem. In general, countries in regions such as Southeast Asia that allocate ‘moderate’ amount of resources for security attract more international tourists relative to countries in regions, such as the Middle East and North Africa, that spend a larger share of GDP on security.