Liu Zhen, Pang Ping, Fang Wei, Ali Sajid, Anser Muhammad Khalid
School of Business, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China.
Institute of Agricultural Economic and Information, Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Guangzhou, 510640 China.
Air Qual Atmos Health. 2022;15(8):1395-1411. doi: 10.1007/s11869-022-01164-5. Epub 2022 Feb 16.
It is well known that pandemic-related uncertainty affects various macroeconomic indicators, including environmental quality. Due to pandemic outbreaks, the reduction in economic activities affects the environmental quality in many economies. The study explores the impact of pandemic uncertainty on environmental quality in East-Asia and Pacific countries. Most past research use only CO emissions, which is an inappropriate measurement of environmental quality. Besides CO emissions, we have utilized other pollutants like NO and CH emissions along with ecological footprint. The traditional econometric approaches ignore cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity and give biased outcomes. Hence, we have employed a new method, "Dynamic Common Correlated Effects (DCCE)," which can excellently deal with the problems mentioned above. The short-run and long-run DCCE estimations show a negative and significant influence of pandemic uncertainty on ecological footprint, CO and CH emissions in whole and lower-income group of East-Asia and Pacific region. Moreover, pandemic uncertainty has a negative relationship with all indicators of environmental quality in higher-income economies. The study provides a unique opportunity to examine how pandemic uncertainty through anthropogenic activities affects environmental quality and serves as a significant resource for policymakers in planning and estimating the effectiveness of environmental quality measures. It is necessary to carry out sustainable environmental policies in East-Asia and Pacific region according to the vulnerabilities and resilience to global pandemic uncertainty.
众所周知，与大流行相关的不确定性会影响包括环境质量在内的各种宏观经济指标。由于大流行的爆发，经济活动的减少影响了许多经济体的环境质量。该研究探讨了大流行不确定性对东亚和太平洋国家环境质量的影响。过去的大多数研究仅使用碳排放，这对环境质量的衡量并不恰当。除了碳排放，我们还使用了其他污染物，如氮氧化物和甲烷排放，以及生态足迹。传统的计量经济学方法忽略了横截面依赖性和异质性，会得出有偏差的结果。因此，我们采用了一种新方法，即“动态共同相关效应（DCCE）”，它能够很好地处理上述问题。短期和长期的DCCE估计表明，大流行不确定性对东亚和太平洋地区整体以及低收入群体的生态足迹、碳排放和甲烷排放具有负面且显著的影响。此外，在高收入经济体中，大流行不确定性与环境质量的所有指标都呈负相关。该研究提供了一个独特的机会，来审视大流行不确定性如何通过人类活动影响环境质量，并为政策制定者规划和评估环境质量措施的有效性提供了重要资源。根据对全球大流行不确定性的脆弱性和恢复力，在东亚和太平洋地区实施可持续的环境政策是必要的。
