The effect of climatic and economic factors on the tourism industry in different regions of Iran (with the method of Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares and Generalized Method of Moment in the period 2008-2018)

The tourism industry is one of the largest service industries and one of the most important economic activities in the world. There are many studies on this subject, most of which have studied the climatic and economic factors seperately. In this study, we want to examine the simultaneous effects of economic and climatic factors on tourism. In this regard, panel data was collected for 30 provinces of Iran during the years 2006 to 2018. These provinces were classified in seven regions and each region is individually examined. Given the cointegration analysis results, we were using panel data or DOLS or GMM procedures, for each region. In general, according to the results, in many provinces, climate variables have a significant effect on tourism along with economic variables. In fact, in all provinces where provincial value added has been significant, value added leads to an increase in the number of tourists in the long run. Results for climate variables show that with increasing temperature, the number of tourists in provinces of Khorasan Razavi, South Khorasan, Tehran, Semnan, Isfahan, Kerman, Markazi, Sistan and Baluchestan, Yazd, Qom, Bushehr, Hormozgan, Khuzestan provinces increases. The increase in raining in the autumn and winter seasons in the provinces of Mazandaran and Gilan are among the provinces with the highest number of tourists and Fars, Ilam, Lorestan, Kohkiloyehr and Boyer Ahmad provinces will have fewer tourists in these seasons.