Accounting Faculty, Hebei Vocational University of Technology and Engineering, Xingtai 054000, China.
Department of Accountancy, College of Administrative and Financial Sciences, Saudi Electronic University, Riyadh 11673, Saudi Arabia.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Dec 6;19(23):16336. doi: 10.3390/ijerph192316336.
Emerging countries are approaching economic prosperity. However, the development process has enhanced their ecological footprints, thus promoting low-carbon competitiveness among E7 countries' industries. Therefore, it is essential to identify the factors that affect a country's ecological footprint (EF) in order to safeguard the environment. This study explored the effect of financial development, human capital, and institutional quality on the EF of emerging countries. Furthermore, we explored the effect of financial development on the EF of emerging countries through the human capital channel. In addition, we investigated the role of institutional quality in the financial development-EF nexus. Using panel data from 1990 to 2018, we employed the cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) technique to conduct a short-term and long-term empirical analysis. The empirical outcomes revealed that financial development degrades ecological quality by raising the EF. The findings further demonstrated that human capital and institutional quality reduce the EF. Moreover, financial development fosters environmental sustainability through the channel of human capital. Additionally, institutional quality reduces the negative ecological impacts of financial development. The causality analysis suggested that any policy related to financial development, human capital, and institutional quality will affect the EF. However, the inverse conclusion was not sustained. Based on these findings, emerging economies should increase their environmental sustainability by promoting human capital and effectively using financial resources.
新兴国家正在走向经济繁荣。然而，发展过程中增加了它们的生态足迹，从而提高了 E7 国家产业的低碳竞争力。因此，有必要确定影响一个国家生态足迹（EF）的因素，以保护环境。本研究探讨了金融发展、人力资本和制度质量对新兴国家生态足迹的影响。此外，我们还通过人力资本渠道探讨了金融发展对新兴国家生态足迹的影响。此外，我们还研究了制度质量在金融发展与 EF 关系中的作用。我们利用 1990 年至 2018 年的面板数据，采用横截面自回归分布滞后（CS-ARDL）技术进行短期和长期实证分析。实证结果表明，金融发展通过提高 EF 来降低生态质量。研究结果还表明，人力资本和制度质量降低了 EF。此外，金融发展通过人力资本渠道促进环境可持续性。此外，制度质量降低了金融发展的负面生态影响。因果关系分析表明，与金融发展、人力资本和制度质量相关的任何政策都会影响 EF。然而，反面结论并没有得到维持。根据这些发现，新兴经济体应通过促进人力资本和有效利用金融资源来提高环境可持续性。
