Towards cross‐regional sustainable development: The nexus between information and communication technology, energy consumption, and CO₂ emissions

Abstract

The environmental impact of information and communication technology (ICT) has drawn increasing attention for two decades. The behaviour of ICT is positive towards economic growth; however, its environmental implications cannot be ignored. This empirical research explores the roles of ICT, economic growth, and energy consumption in environmental pollution across different regions from 1990 to 2015. Robust long‐run panel data estimation methods fully modified ordinary least square and dynamic ordinary least square and Driscoll–Kraay regression are applied. To summarise the results, ICT reduces the level of CO2 emissions across high‐ and middle‐income countries; however, contrary to this, ICT increases CO2 emissions in low‐income countries. Also, energy consumption is responsible for the increase in CO2 emissions in all income groups as expected. Finally, the environmental Kuznets curve is proved in all income groups. It is inferred that high‐ and middle‐income regions of the world have achieved a level of environmental sustainability in the significance of ICT, but this is not the case in low‐income countries.

Green innovation and ecological footprint relationship for a sustainable development: Evidence from top 20 green innovator countries

“…A major drawback in most of the empirical studies (e.g., Danish et al, 2019; Khan et al, 2019) in the literature is that these studies apply either OLS or FMOLS, both of which rely on the rigid assumption of cross‐sectional independence. To tackle this drawback, we opt for DSUR introduced by Mark et al (2005).…”

Investigating the nexus between CO 2 emissions, economic growth, energy consumption and pilgrimage tourism in Saudi Arabia

“…They revealed that tourist arrivals have a positive and statistically significant impact on the level of energy consumption and CO 2 emissions. According to Danish et al (2019), energy consumption is responsible for the increase in CO 2 emissions in all income groups. Liu et al (2019) studied for Pakistan covered the data peroid from 1980 to 2016.…”

The impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on carbon dioxide emissions: Evidence from heterogeneous ICT countries

“…Given these conflicting theories on the impact of ICTs on environmental quality, the literature on ICT emissions has also produced heterogeneous findings. For instance, some scholars maintain that ICTs improve environmental quality [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] while others document that ICT degrade the environment [33][34][35] .…”