Inbound Tourism and Social Factors in Nigeria: Evidence from an Ardl-Ecm Model

This paper investigated the relationship between social factors and inbound tourism in Nigeria between 1990 and 2012. Phillip Perron unit root test revealed stationarity of the variables at their first difference while the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to cointegration also established the long run relationship among the variables. In the short run, LOG(ILL), LOG(CRM(-1))and DLOG(MPR(-1)) exhibited negatively significant relationship with inbound tourism in Nigeria while LOG(URB(-1)) has a positively significant relationship. The long run result indicates that LOG(URB) is positively related with tourism demand (LOG(TAR)). On the other hand, LOG(MPR) shows an inversely significant relationship with LOG(TAR). Nigerian government should still do more in the area of awareness of malaria prevention and compliance. Also, more commitment should be made in fighting illiteracy especially at the rural level