Embracing green banking as a mean of expressing green behavior in a developing economy: exploring the mediating role of green culture.

According to a plethora of research and publications, the volume and amount of pollution are largely attributable to human-made emissions. Even during the recently ended Covid-19 outbreak, there was a notable decrease in global pollution, particularly in Pakistan's heavily populated cities. Due to the current situation, it is strategically important to safeguard the environment, and there are many criteria and predictors that should be used to encourage green behavior. This study examines green banking as a means of demonstrating ecologically responsible conduct in a developing nation. A survey questionnaire was used to collect information from 280 respondents via human contact and an internet platform. Software called SmartPLS3.0 was used to analyze the structural relationships between the study's variables. The results show that customers' adoption of green banking practices is statistically significantly influenced by their level of environmental consciousness and attitude. Similarly, green culture exhibits a substantial mediating influence between the independent variables and green behavior as well as a positive significant effect on green behavior. However, it is established that the consumer's apparent behavioral control is negligible. Particularly, the cognitive connection between behavior and culture is weak and insufficient to forecast behavior. For policymakers, especially those working in the field of green education, this study has many real-world applications.

Trade openness and urbanization impact on renewable and non-renewable energy consumption in China.

China has witnessed significant growth in trade through vide range trade liberalization strategies and urbanization has also been entered in advanced stage. Based on these dynamics, how much energy consumption of both renewable and none renewable account for energy consumption in whole system is a point of higher attention for the researchers. To understand this salient emerging debatable concern, we investigate the impact of trade openness and urbanization effect on renewable and non-renewable energy consumption in China for the period 1990-2018. We apply the quantile regression technique for the analysis; our results show that trade significantly increases the non-renewable energy consumption in all quintiles while partially increasing renewable energy consumption. This shows that trade activities in production and export commodities heavily rely on non-renewable energy inputs instead of renewable energy inputs. Urbanization affects non-renewable energy consumption only in three quintiles, while its effect is insignificant in most of the quintiles. Similarly, urbanization does not affect renewable energy consumption as in almost all quantiles the coefficients are statistically insignificant. This implies that urbanization is one of the determinants of energy consumption in China. The empirical findings of this study suggest some policy recommendations; first, the government needs to implement certain regulations while expanding trade to minimize the negative effect of non-renewable energy consumption; besides government should provide incentives to industrial units and traders for using renewable energy which may help to attain long term sustainable development goals. The government should also put certain limitations on population moving from rural to urban destinations.

Public Health Expenditures and Health Outcomes in Pakistan: Evidence from Quantile Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model.

OBJECTIVE: The provision of healthcare facilities remains high on the manifesto of various political parties in Pakistan and healthcare spending has witnessed a significant surge in the last two decades that is expected to positively influence health outcomes in the country. Therefore, this research aims to explore the effects of healthcare expenditures on the actual health status of the masses in Pakistan for the period 1995Q1 to 2017Q1. METHODS: We apply the Quantile Autoregressive Distributed Lag (QARDL) approach for estimation purposes. This is the most recent and emerging estimation technique in time series analysis. RESULTS: Our findings confirm that public healthcare spending significantly impacts health outcomes in Pakistan both in the short-run and long-run. Public healthcare spending improves life expectancy and reduces death rate and infant mortality. CONCLUSION: The study concludes that public healthcare is the main focus of the current regime. It is noticed that spending on healthcare significantly contributes to the health outcomes in Pakistan. These efforts by the government significantly promote life expectancy and drop down the mortality ratio in the country. Based on these notable facts, the government should allocate sufficient resources towards the latest healthcare technologies and equipment to optimize health outcomes in the country.

Exploring Asymmetric Nexus Between CO2 Emissions, Environmental Pollution, and Household Health Expenditure in China.

OBJECTIVE: This study investigates the nexus between household health expenditure, CO2 emissions and environmental pollution in China. We analyzed the asymmetric dynamic relationship between CO2 emissions, environmental pollution and household health expenditure for the period 1990 to 2019 in China. METHODS: This study adopted nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) and Granger causality following the diagnostic test. Furthermore, we applied Dickey-Fuller (ADF), PP unit root tests, Zivot and Andrews test for structural breaks in our analysis. The NARDL is the most suitable econometric technique for estimations, especially if the asymmetric relationship exists among the variables. NARDL technique is capable to explore the dynamic relationship between CO2 emissions, environmental pollution and household health expenditure. RESULTS: The empirical results verify the asymmetric nexus between CO2 emissions, environmental pollution and household health expenditure in the context of China. The outcomes revealed that in the short run and long run positive shocks of CO2 emissions and environmental pollution positively affecting health expenditure, while negative shocks reduce health spendings. The results also demonstrate bi-directional causality among household health spendings, CO2 emissions and environmental pollution. CONCLUSION: Our results support many previous studies, documenting that CO2 emissions positively contribute to the amount of household health expenditure, confirming the asymmetric relationship between CO2 emissions and household health expenditure. The results also confirm the statistically significant and asymmetrically positive relationship between environmental pollution and household health expenditure. This implies that Chinese residents have to bear more household health expenditure, in the case of more CO2 emissions and a greater amount of environmental pollution.

Unraveling the Dynamic Nexus Between Trade Liberalization, Energy Consumption, CO2 Emissions, and Health Expenditure in Southeast Asian Countries.

OBJECTIVE: Most of the Southeast Asian countries witnessed remarkable economic growth in the last few decades. Trade is a primary factor in achieving this exponential economic progress in these countries. Besides, the positive implications of trade, it has associated cost of escalated energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and resulting health complications which leads to higher public health expenditures. This study examines the nexus between trade liberalization, energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and health expenditures in Southeast Asian countries for the period of 1991 to 2018. METHODS: The empirical methods used in this study entail diagnostic testing, correlation analysis, and structure equation modeling (SEM) technique. SEM is an advanced multivariate analysis technique that can test complex multivariate causal associations among a set of variables. Therefore, it is the most suitable econometric approach to explore the dynamic association between trade openness, energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and health expenditures. RESULTS: The empirical results reveal a nexus between trade openness, energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and health expenditure in Southeast Asian countries. Nevertheless, pollutant emissions have a direct impact on health expenditures, whereas trade and energy consumption shows an indirect influence on the escalation in public health spending in sample Southeast Asian countries. Moreover, the mediating path of each indirect effect is energy consumption. CONCLUSION: These results imply that Southeast Asian countries heavily rely on fossil energy to fuel economic growth. Hence, to promote sustainable and eco-friendly economic development, the respective governments need to reform their energy sectors by tapping into renewable energy resources and deploy green technologies to reduce pollutant emissions for the development of a healthy society. In addition, governments should levy taxes on highly polluting industries so as to curtail carbon emissions and resulting health expenditures.