Temporal Dynamics of Tourism Sustainability: Economic and Environmental Evidence From Greece

ABSTRACT Tourism is a resource‐intensive sector that generates substantial economic benefits while exerting long‐term pressure on energy systems and the environment. This study examines the sustainability of tourism in Greece by analyzing how tourism growth affects economic performance, energy consumption, and carbon emissions across different time horizons. Using annual data for 1970–2020, the analysis combines frequency‐domain causality testing with Bayesian Structural Time Series (BSTS) modeling to identify short‐, medium‐, and long‐term dynamics. The results reveal a temporal decoupling between tourism's economic benefits and its environmental costs. Tourism growth significantly enhances GDP and employment in the medium term, whereas its effects on energy consumption and carbon emissions emerge predominantly in the long run. These findings are robust across alternative model specifications and align with evidence from other tourism‐intensive regions, while providing new temporally explicit insights not captured by conventional time‐domain approaches. The study contributes by introducing the Tourism–Energy–Environment Feedback (TEEF) framework, which conceptualizes tourism as a delayed‐response socio‐metabolic system. Policy implications highlight the need for anticipatory sustainability strategies that integrate tourism into long‐term energy and climate planning.