Economic growth, environmental regulations, energy use, and ecological footprint linkage in the Next-11 countries: Implications for environmental sustainability

Abstract

The activities of humans on Earth have increased the global concern for climate change, ecological distortions, and environmental deterioration. These concerns have warranted regulations that relate to environmental preservation and sustainability. However, the efficiency of such regulations in emerging economies is yet to be ascertained as conclusions from various findings still remain murky. We explore how environmental regulations affects ecological footprint (EFP) using the cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) model, augmented mean group (AMG), and the common correlated effects mean group estimators (CCEMG) in the eleven fastest emerging economies (N11). The findings reveal that environmental regulations are not efficient in abating environmental deterioration. Economic growth, trade, and energy consumption invigorate the EFP. The country-specific findings confirm that energy consumption and economic growth promote environmental degradation in all the N11 countries, and the outcome was consistent across all estimators. Finally, policy directions are discussed along with the limitations of the study.