Abban Olivier Joseph, Rajaguru Gulasekaran, Acheampong Alex O
Bond Business School, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia; Centre for Data Analytics, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia.
J Environ Manage. 2025 Jan;373:123645. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.123645. Epub 2024 Dec 16.
This study examines the impact of economic institutions on ecological footprint and their spatial spillover effects globally, covering the period from 2000 to 2021. We focus on economic institutions because institutions that espouse economic freedom are essential for safeguarding environmental quality. We hypothesize that the spatial influence of these institutions varies both globally and regionally. The Moran's I test reveals significant spatial associations among countries, while the Wald and likelihood tests identify the spatial Durbin model as the most appropriate approach. Furthermore, the Hausman test indicates that a fixed effects model best captures the coefficients. Globally, economic institutions demonstrate a direct reduction effect of 16.4% and a spillover reduction effect of 4.4% on ecological footprint. However, these effects show considerable regional variation. In North America, East Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and Central Asia, economic institutions effectively reduce ecological footprint, while their impact is negligible in other regions. These regional differences underscore the importance of addressing institutional deficiencies, encouraging policymakers in regions with limited effects to learn from best practices to enhance institutional effectiveness. These insights collectively advance the literature on economic institutions and environmental economics, emphasizing regional policy adaptation and the transboundary effects of institutional quality. The findings further reveal that economic institutions moderate GDP per capita to curb ecological footprint significantly. These conclusions hold even after addressing endogeneity using the generalized spatial two-stage least squares method. The study recommends that policies promoting economic freedom are essential to mitigate global environmental degradation.
本研究考察了2000年至2021年期间经济制度对全球生态足迹的影响及其空间溢出效应。我们关注经济制度是因为支持经济自由的制度对于保障环境质量至关重要。我们假设这些制度的空间影响在全球和区域层面都存在差异。莫兰指数检验揭示了各国之间存在显著的空间关联，而沃尔德检验和似然比检验则确定空间杜宾模型是最合适的方法。此外，豪斯曼检验表明固定效应模型能最好地捕捉系数。在全球范围内，经济制度对生态足迹的直接减少效应为16.4%，溢出减少效应为4.4%。然而，这些效应在区域层面存在显著差异。在北美、东亚及太平洋地区、中东、北非、欧洲和中亚，经济制度有效地减少了生态足迹，而在其他地区其影响可忽略不计。这些区域差异凸显了解决制度缺陷的重要性，鼓励效果有限地区的政策制定者借鉴最佳实践以提高制度有效性。这些见解共同推动了经济制度和环境经济学领域的文献发展，强调了区域政策调整以及制度质量的跨界效应。研究结果还表明，经济制度通过调节人均国内生产总值来显著抑制生态足迹。即使在使用广义空间两阶段最小二乘法解决内生性问题后，这些结论依然成立。该研究建议，促进经济自由的政策对于缓解全球环境退化至关重要。
