Wang Yinuo, Ali Arshad, Chen Zhaojie
School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China.
School of Economics and Management, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin, China.
Sci Rep. 2025 Jan 17;15(1):2308. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-86451-8.
Densely populated countries have higher demand for agricultural products and greater use of fuel and vehicles, resulting in higher environmental emissions, so this study considers transportation infrastructure and the agricultural sector as the two major drivers of environmental degradation in the top five densely populated countries. In a baseline regression, this study first unveils the impact of investments in transportation infrastructure, agricultural value addition, and environment-related technologies on per capita CO emissions using CS-ARDL approach from 1990 to 2021 in the five most populous countries. Besides, this study also reveals the typical moderating effect of environment-related technologies in the link between transport infrastructure, agricultural value added and environmental hazards. The results of the baseline model indicate that transport infrastructure and agricultural value added can substantially contribute to per capita carbon emissions in both the short and long term. However, environment-related technologies significantly reduce environmental emissions in both the short and long term. Per capita GDP extensively promotes per capita carbon dioxide emissions, while per capita GDP substantially reduces per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the long term rather than the short term, thus authenticating the inverted U-shaped EKC hypothesis for the top five countries with the highest population density. The moderating effect of environment-related technologies shows that the application of environment-related technologies in both transportation and agriculture can alleviate environmental pollution. Finally, the threshold level of environment-related technologies shows that as environment-related technologies move from lower threshold levels (≤ - 1.05) to higher threshold levels (> -1.05), agricultural value added and transportation infrastructure investment significantly improve the reduction of environmental contamination. The goal of environmental sustainability can be ensured by the adoption of environment-related technologies in agriculture and transportation sectors.
人口密集型国家对农产品的需求更高，对燃料和车辆的使用也更多，导致环境排放增加，因此本研究将交通基础设施和农业部门视为人口最密集的五个国家环境退化的两大驱动因素。在基线回归中，本研究首先采用CS-ARDL方法，揭示了1990年至2021年期间，五个人口最多的国家交通基础设施投资、农业增加值和环境相关技术对人均碳排放的影响。此外，本研究还揭示了环境相关技术在交通基础设施、农业增加值与环境危害之间的联系中所起的典型调节作用。基线模型的结果表明，交通基础设施和农业增加值在短期和长期内都能显著促进人均碳排放。然而，环境相关技术在短期和长期内都能显著减少环境排放。人均GDP广泛地促进了人均二氧化碳排放，而人均GDP在长期而非短期内显著减少了人均二氧化碳排放，从而验证了人口密度最高的五个国家的倒U型环境库兹涅茨曲线假说。环境相关技术的调节作用表明，在交通和农业中应用环境相关技术可以减轻环境污染。最后，环境相关技术的阈值水平表明，随着环境相关技术从较低阈值水平（≤ -1.05）向较高阈值水平（> -1.05）转变，农业增加值和交通基础设施投资显著提高了环境污染的减少程度。通过在农业和交通部门采用环境相关技术，可以确保环境可持续性目标的实现。
