Department of Accounting, Economics and Finance, Bournemouth University, United Kingdom.
Faculty of Economics, Administrative and Social Sciences, Istanbul Gelisim University, Istanbul, Turkey; Department of Financial Technologies, South Ural State University, Chelyabinsk, Russia.
Sci Total Environ. 2020 Apr 15;713:136726. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.136726. Epub 2020 Jan 15.
Given that the European Union-28 countries proposed a target of 3% of the Gross Domestic Product on research and development (R&D) expenditure by 2020, the current study attempts to examine the role of R&D on environmental sustainability. In addition, the study further investigates the long-run and causal interaction between, renewable energy consumption, nonrenewable energy consumption, and economic growth in an ecological footprint-income function. Notably, the study incorporates research and development (R&D) expenditure to the model as an additional variable, and measures impact of each variable on ecological footprint. Empirical evidence is based on a balanced panel data between annual periods of 1997-2014 for selected EU-16 countries. The Pedroni, Johansen Multivariate and Kao tests all reveal a cointegration between ecological footprint, economic growth, research and development expenditure, renewable, and nonrenewable energy consumption. The Fully Modified and Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares models (FMOLS and DOLS) both suggest a negative significant relationship between the countries' research and development expenditure and ecological footprint in the long-run. This implies that spending on R&D significantly impacts on environmental sustainability of the panel countries. Our study affirms that nonrenewable energy consumption and economic growth increase carbon emission flaring while renewable energy consumption declines ecological footprint. The panel causality analysis reveals a feedback mechanism between ecological footprint, R&D expenditure, renewable, and nonrenewable energy consumption. We further observed a one-way causality between ecological footprint and economic growth. The current further validates that the Environmental Kuznet Curve Hypothesis (EKC) holds for this panel of EU countries examined. Effective policy implications could be drawn toward modern and environmentally friendly energy sources, especially in attaining the Sustainable Development Goals via spending on R&D.
鉴于欧盟 28 个国家提出到 2020 年将研发支出占国内生产总值的比例提高到 3%的目标，本研究试图考察研发对环境可持续性的作用。此外，本研究还进一步研究了可再生能源消费、不可再生能源消费和经济增长在生态足迹-收入函数中的长期和因果关系。值得注意的是，该研究将研发支出作为一个额外变量纳入模型，并衡量每个变量对生态足迹的影响。实证证据基于 1997 年至 2014 年期间选定的欧盟 16 个国家的年度平衡面板数据。佩德洛尼、约翰森多变量和考检验都表明，生态足迹、经济增长、研发支出、可再生和不可再生能源消费之间存在协整关系。完全修正和动态普通最小二乘法（FMOLS 和 DOLS）模型都表明，长期来看，这些国家的研发支出与生态足迹之间存在负相关关系。这意味着研发支出对面板国家的环境可持续性有重大影响。我们的研究证实，不可再生能源消费和经济增长增加了碳排放，而可再生能源消费则减少了生态足迹。面板因果关系分析揭示了生态足迹、研发支出、可再生和不可再生能源消费之间的反馈机制。我们还观察到生态足迹与经济增长之间存在单向因果关系。本研究进一步证实，环境库兹涅茨曲线假说（EKC）适用于所研究的欧盟国家。可以针对现代和环保能源制定有效的政策建议，特别是通过研发支出实现可持续发展目标。
