Wijethunga Ambepitiya Wijethunga Gamage Champa Nilanthi, Rahman Mohammad Mafizur, Sarker Tapan
School of Business, University of Southern Queensland, West Street, Toowoomba, QLD, 4350, Australia.
Department of Accountancy & Finance, Faculty of Management Studies, Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka, Belihuloya, 70140, Sri Lanka.
Heliyon. 2024 Sep 26;10(19):e38454. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e38454. eCollection 2024 Oct 15.
It is crucial to evaluate the link between financial development and environmental quality in order to meet the environmental sustainability goals. Therefore, this scholarly work seeks to validate the of an inverted U-shaped relationship between financial development and environmental quality in Australia, which modifies the conventional theory of the Environmental Kuznets Curve. For the purposes of empirical analysis, we utilized the Autoregressive Distributed Lag bound test over the period from 1980 to 2021 for empirical investigation. Our findings confirm the existence of a Financial Environmental Kuznets Curve (FEKC) in the long-run, while the short-run results do not support its establishment. This means that achieving a financial development level of 0.0458 could help attain the environmental wellbeing in Australia. Similarly, the estimation outcomes affirm that the conventional Environmental Kuznets Curve exists in the long-run but not in the short-run. Our results also indicate that energy usage negatively impacts environmental quality, while foreign direct investments support the pollution halo effect in the long-run but do not exhibit this effect in the short-run. The roles of urbanization and trade openness are positive in enhancing quality of environment in the short-run. However, the effect of the carbon tax on determining environmental quality in Australia is deemed insignificant. In conclusion, this study offers vital policy recommendations to help achieve the Australian government's commitment to climate change.
为实现环境可持续发展目标，评估金融发展与环境质量之间的联系至关重要。因此，这项学术研究旨在验证澳大利亚金融发展与环境质量之间倒U型关系的存在，这一关系修正了传统的环境库兹涅茨曲线理论。出于实证分析的目的，我们在1980年至2021年期间运用自回归分布滞后边界检验进行实证研究。我们的研究结果证实，从长期来看存在金融环境库兹涅茨曲线（FEKC），而短期结果并不支持其成立。这意味着实现0.0458的金融发展水平有助于实现澳大利亚的环境福祉。同样，估计结果证实，传统的环境库兹涅茨曲线在长期存在，但在短期不存在。我们的结果还表明，能源使用对环境质量有负面影响，而外国直接投资从长期来看支持污染光环效应，但在短期不表现出这种效应。城市化和贸易开放度在短期内对提高环境质量具有积极作用。然而，碳税对澳大利亚环境质量的影响被认为不显著。总之，本研究提供了重要的政策建议，以帮助实现澳大利亚政府对气候变化的承诺。
