Digital Financial Inclusion, Environmental Performance, and Tourism Sustainability: A Cross-Country Association Analysis with Evidence from Arab Economies

Digital financial inclusion may facilitate environmentally sustainable tourism, but financial participation, environmental performance, and tourism-related socioeconomic outcomes are conceptually distinct. This study examines their cross-country associations using 112 economies, including ten Arab economies. Digital financial inclusion is measured using the World Bank Global Findex digital-payment indicator for 2017. Environmental performance is represented by the recalculated 2021 Environmental Sustainability pillar of the World Economic Forum, while the 2024 tourism outcome combines the Socioeconomic Impact and Demand Sustainability pillars, excluding environmental indicators to avoid mechanical overlap. Standardized ordinary least-squares path models control for 2016 real purchasing-power-parity income and macroregion, with HC3 confidence intervals and 5000 country-level bootstrap draws. Digital financial inclusion is positively associated with environmental performance (β = 0.374; 95% CI: 0.154, 0.594), whereas its adjusted total association with the tourism outcome is close to zero (β = −0.021; 95% CI: −0.378, 0.335). The indirect association is negative in the primary specification (ab = −0.093; bootstrap 95% CI: −0.233, −0.002) but is not robust across alternative specifications and reverses sign after adjustment for earlier destination scores. The Arab-only analysis, based on only ten economies, is exploratory and does not provide confirmatory evidence of mediation. Given its limited coverage, these findings cannot be generalized to the wider Arab region. The contribution lies in separating financial participation, environmental performance, and non-environmental tourism sustainability, while demonstrating the sensitivity of their estimated associations to measurement and model specification. The findings support a cautious, non-causal interpretation and identify priorities for future longitudinal and destination-level research.