How Does Logistics Contribute to Carbon Emissions in Turkey?

Abstract

Abstract Increasing carbon emissions (CO2) due to factors such as energy consumption (enco), industrialization, increase in world population, and decrease in green areas with the industrial revolution is one of the main causes of both climate change and global warming. Developments in an area containing risk factors that may affect businesses, countries, and the whole world. It is aimed to determine the impacts of financial development (findev), GDP per capita (pgdp) energy consumption, and amount of freight carried by rail and road on CO2 emissions within the framework of 1990-2021 time-series data for Turkey. By doing so, we employ the ARDL bound testing cointegration test and observe that independent variables have similar and different effects on CO2 emissions. Energy consumption, findev, and per capita income variables have a positive effect on CO2 emissions in Turkey. The effect of rail and road freight transport (FT) on CO2 emissions is negative. Although it is expected that the railway FT will contribute negatively to environmental pollution (EPol), the most interesting finding obtained from the study is related to road FT. The amount of freight transported by road has a decreasing effect on CO2 emissions in Turkey. This paradoxical situation in Turkey may be due to the developments in the transportation infrastructure, which has enabled the convergence of space and time in recent years, young and modern vehicle fleets, and the efficiency provided through logistics companies. Jel Classification: C58, G00, Q53, R40