Ecotourism or ecological concerns? Tracing the impact of economic policy uncertainty and natural resources on tourism-driven ecological footprints.

The influence of tourism development and economic policy uncertainties on environmental sustainability is substantial. Promoting responsible tourism and using sustainable tourism practises, like offering eco-friendly lodging, is a key part of protecting natural habitats and lowering carbon footprints. Hence, this study tries to examine the relationship between tourism development, economic policy uncertainty, renewable energy, and natural resources on the ecological footprint of India during 1990-2022. This study applies a novel dynamic ARDL simulation approach for long-run and short-run analyses. The study also employs frequency-domain causality to check the causal relationship between the variables. The result reveals that tourism has a positive effect on the ecological footprint. Similarly, economic policy uncertainty has a positive and significant effect on the ecological footprint in India during the sample period. Additionally, natural resource rent shows a positive effect on the ecological footprint or deteriorating environmental quality in the short and long run in the sample period. However, renewable energy consumption indicates a negative effect on the ecological footprint. The results reveal that TDI and EPU have rejected the null hypothesis of no Granger cause in the long, medium, and short term. While renewable energy has a causal relationship with ecological footprints in both the long run and medium run, it is imperative for India to adopt measures that facilitate the advancement of sustainable tourism, with a particular focus on promoting environmentally friendly lodging options, enhancing public transportation systems, and implementing effective waste management strategies.

The role of technological innovation and diffusion, energy consumption and financial development in affecting ecological footprint in BRICS: an empirical analysis.

Economic activities, technological innovation and diffusion, energy consumption and financial development have been significant in BRICS countries over the last three decades. Corresponding to it, BRICS have been facing substantial environmental deterioration. The growth of such factors needs a comprehensive analysis. Hence, this paper examines the impact of technological innovation and diffusion, renewable and non-renewable energy consumption and financial development on ecological footprint under the Kuznets framework in BRICS countries over the time from 1990 to 2018. To confirm the long- and short-run relationship, we apply the second-generation and heterogeneity panel techniques. Where, to measure the impact of technological innovation and diffusion, energy consumption and financial development and other control variable on ecological footprint we use Westerlund Co-integration and pooled mean group (PMG) model for this interest. The results reveal that technological diffusion and non-renewable energy consumption deteriorate environmental quality in the long run. In contrast, renewable energy and technological innovation improve environmental sustainability/quality significantly. Further, results also confirm the existence of the EKC hypothesis. The study suggests that the government should encourage technological innovation and renewable energy consumption to improve environmental quality and achieve the sustainable development goal (SDG).

Impact of Economic Structure on the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis in India.

This study aims to evaluate the impact of economic structure on the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) in India. The present study deviates from the bulk of study in the literature with the incorporation of both aggregated and disaggregated measures of economic development on the environmental degradation function. For the empirical analysis, the study employed the Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach of cointegration to analyse the long-run and short-run relationship during 1971-2014. Further, the direction of the causality is investigated through the Wald test approach. The results revealed that the conventional EKC hypothesis does not hold in India in both aggregated and disaggregated models since economic growth and its component have a U-shaped impact on the environmental quality in India. However, the effect of population on environmental quality is positive but not significant in the aggregated model. Whereas, in the disaggregated model, it is significantly affecting environmental quality. Hence, it is possible to infer that the population of the country increases, the demand for energy consumption increase tremendously, particularly consumption of fossil fuel like coal, oil, and natural gas, and is also evident from the energy structure coefficient from both models. This increase is due to the scarcity of renewable energy for meeting the needs of people. On the contrary, urbanization reduces environmental degradation, which may be due to improved living conditions in terms of efficient infrastructure and energy efficiency in the urban area leading to a negative relation between urbanization and environmental degradation.

The intermittent effects of renewable energy on ecological footprint: evidence from developing countries.

This paper examines the relationship between renewable, non-renewable energy, natural resources, human capital, and globalization on ecological footprint from 1990 to 2016 for developing countries. We apply Westerlund co-integration technique to check the long-run relationship among the variables. The long-run elasticity of the model is analyzed through MG, AMG, and DCCE. For the robustness check of the long-run relationship among the variables, we use FMOLS and DOLS approach. The direction of causal relationship is determined through Dumitrescu and Hurlin causality test. Our findings revealed that economic growth, non-renewable energy, natural resource, and urbanization are inducing the ecological footprint of developing countries and reducing the environment's quality. To cope up with this situation, developing countries are bound to use more fossil fuel energy. The use of non-renewable energy consumption leads to increase the extraction of natural resources like coal and oil. However, renewable energy reduces the ecological footprint or improves environmental quality. Similarly, human capital and globalization have negative effects on ecological footprint. The results of causality test reveal that there are feedback effects between ecological footprint with economic growth, globalization, and natural resources. This study suggests that these developing countries should focus more on the investment in the renewable energy sector, improve quality education, and make stringent environmental policy for protecting the nations from ecological issues.

Determinants of material footprint in BRICS countries: an empirical analysis.

This paper explores the relationship between renewable energy consumption, urbanization, human capital, trade, natural resources, and material footprint for BRICS countries from 1990 to 2016. We apply the cross-sectional dependency test to check the correlation among the cross-section. Then, we use the second-generation panel test like CADF and CIPS to check the stationary in the series. After that, we go for the panel cointegration test, i.e., Pedroni and Westerlund panel cointegration, to know the long-run relationship of the variables. The test results reject the null hypothesis of no cointegration among the variables and accept cointegration. The long-run results indicate that economic growth, natural resources, renewable energy, and urbanization have reduced the environmental quality for BRICS countries in case of material footprint employed to measure environmental degradation. However, foreign trade and human capital improve environmental quality. Based on the empirical results, the study recommended some important policy suggestions to achieve sustainable development in BRICS countries.