The Impact of Growth in Tourism on Economic and Human Development – Incorporating a Systematic Literature Review

This article is purposed to address the vital research aims: (1) to examine the impact of the growth in tourism on economic and human development; (2) to understand the current state of research between three observed variables in the development process; (3) to find out the research gap in population, that is the bulk of research concentrate to “tourism led growth hypothesis” but less of “relationship between tourism, economic and human development” in the same study. This research is a systematic literature review using a search-strategy-developing that is based on the PICOC concept. The data collection follows the Prisma diagram sequence. The main keywords are “economic growth”, “tourism development”, “human development” in the 1975 - 2021 period, the 90 articles with at least one citation for the review are collected to clarify the research aims. Some main results are highlighted: (1) A short-term, long-term, and causal relationship between observed variables of tourism in developing countries, developed countries, and emerging countries. (2) A set of quantitative research methods in time series was used for analysis. (3) propose some future research directions. The former results contributed to the identification of the role of tourism in economic development, thereby building a strategy for exploiting and developing sustainable tourism. The latter is to measure the level of human development (in a positive view) through economic development and tourism. Furthermore, it is also to complete a comprehensive economic development strategy on human welfare, quality of life, and sustainability.