Department of Economics, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria.
Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Hatay Mustafa Kemal University, 31060, Hatay, Turkiye.
J Environ Manage. 2022 Nov 15;322:116061. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.116061. Epub 2022 Sep 3.
Convergence of the environmental indicators has been one of the significant research areas for researchers since the study of Strazicich and List (2003) was published. Earlier papers have concentrated on investigating the existence of the convergence of indicators of the environment by using carbon emissions as a pollution indicator. However, some researchers have criticized the use of carbon emission as a one-dimensional indicator and proposed using ecological footprint as a more comprehensive indicator. The primary aim of this paper is to examine whether stochastic convergence of ecological footprint exists in 49 African countries from 1973 to 2018 by employing a battery of traditional stationarity methods and a newly proposed stationary method with smooth shifts and a combination of p-values. The empirical results show that panel findings of the conventional stationarity test with no structural shifts reveal that ecological footprint follows a stationary process. In contrast, panel findings of the traditional stationarity method with sharp and smooth changes and the newly developed stationary method with smooth shifts and a combination of p-values reveal that ecological footprint follows a non-stationary process. Moreover, the majority of individual results show that the ecological footprint follows a convergent pattern in 38 African countries, whereas it follows a divergent pattern in the remainder. Therefore, the main finding indicates the stochastic convergence of ecological footprint in African countries is validated. The policy outcomes of the empirical results are given in the body of the paper.
自 Strazicich 和 List（2003）的研究发表以来，环境指标的趋同一直是研究人员的重要研究领域之一。早期的研究论文集中于通过使用碳排放作为污染指标来研究环境指标的趋同是否存在。然而，一些研究人员批评了使用碳排放作为一维指标的做法，并提出使用生态足迹作为更全面的指标。本文的主要目的是通过采用一系列传统的平稳性检验方法和一种新的带有平滑转换的平稳性检验方法以及 p 值组合，检验 1973 年至 2018 年 49 个非洲国家的生态足迹是否存在随机趋同。实证结果表明，没有结构转换的传统平稳性检验的面板结果表明生态足迹遵循平稳过程。相比之下，具有尖锐和平滑转换的传统平稳性检验方法以及具有平滑转换和 p 值组合的新发展平稳性检验方法的面板结果表明，生态足迹遵循非平稳过程。此外，大多数国家的个别结果表明，在 38 个非洲国家中，生态足迹呈现趋同模式，而在其余国家中则呈现发散模式。因此，主要发现表明，非洲国家的生态足迹存在随机趋同。实证结果的政策结果在论文正文中给出。
