Predictors of quitting smoking behavior: evidence from Pakistan.

This study attempts to identify factors that significantly encourage the cessation of smoking in the context of Pakistan. The study distributes a modified questionnaire among 421 respondents (current as well as former smokers) in the capital city of Pakistan, Islamabad. The binary regression method was employed to data for analyzing predictors of making quit attempts and successful smoking cessation. The result indicates that respondents having strong intentions to quit, high socioeconomic status, low nicotine dependency, and past quit attempts, and those having no-smoking friends, are more likely to quit cigarette smoking successfully. On the other hand, factors like social pressure to quit smoking, religious information against smoking, intention to quit smoking, and public regulation on smoking are more likely to encourage smokers to make quit attempts. The study calls for community and school-wide smoking cessation campaigns involving officials, peers and parents, religious leaders, and other influential individuals to inform people about the dangers of smoking. In addition, religious leaders should be encouraged to issue rulings against smoking especially during "Friday Prayer." Furthermore, the government should pronounce more strict and comprehensive regulations on smoking by properly monitoring its implementation to encourage cessation of cigarette smoking.

Digital inclusion to enhance energy sustainability: public participation and environmental governance in the new media era to achieve energy sustainable goals.

Renewable energy not only helps to safeguard the environment and slow down climate change but also supports economic growth and energy security. The significance of renewable energy sources is expanding as more people throughout the globe understand how important it is to switch to clean energy sources. Therefore, empirics are in search of the factors that can promote renewable energy production. This analysis investigates some of the novel determinants of renewable energy production, such as digital inclusion, public participation, and environmental governance, which have not been examined previously in any study. For empirical analysis, the study employs the ARDL and QARDL estimation techniques using Chinese data from 1998Q1 to 2021Q4. The analysis findings confirm that digital financial inclusion, ICT, and GDP are vital in boosting both short and long-run renewable production. Green investment, environmental governance, and carbon emissions also significantly and favourably impact long-run renewable energy production. In the Quantile ARDL model, digital financial inclusion is positively linked to renewable energy production at most of its quantiles in the short and long run, while the ICT, GDP, environmental governance, and carbon emissions are positively linked to renewable energy in most quantiles in the long-run only. The Wald test confirms the asymmetric impact for all variables in the long run, which implies that policymakers should consider the positive and negative changes in these factors while devising policies for enhancing renewable energy production.

Curvature and turning point of the environmental Kuznets curve in a global economy: the role of governance.

This study explores the role of governance in shaping the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC), especially focusing on its curvature and turning point. The study highlights the role of various governance indicators in the formulation, implementation, and enforcement of environmental regulations. However, the study asserts that since in developing countries poverty, infrastructure, and human development are valued above a clean environment, good governance is less likely to contribute to mitigating pollution in developing countries. Using a panel of 160 countries, the study finds that better governance helps bring down the critical level of per capita income at which the relationship between income and pollution turns negative. Furthermore, the EKC can be shifted downward by improving governance in the respective countries. The study, however, reveals that the dividends of better governance are more pronounced at higher income levels. Since good governance works only when the desired regulations are in place, it is recommended that for poor countries aid packages for governance reforms need to emphasize the enactment of specific environmental regulations. Investment in institutions is expected to yield maximum dividends in such countries that have gained high-income status but are still lacking in institutional development.

Financial sector development and energy poverty: empirical evidence from developing countries.

This study empirically assesses the significance of financial sector development in determining the energy poverty of developing countries. The study utilizes a sample of 110 developing economies over a period ranging from 1990 to 2020. The analysis is based on the traditional econometric techniques comprising pooled OLS, fixed-effects, and random-effects and Driscoll and Kraay's robust standard error approach for pooled OLS, fixed effects, and random effects. To account for a possible endogeneity problem, the study also uses the system GMM model. Our empirical outcomes verify a positive role of financial sector development in alleviating energy poverty of the sample economies. The findings also provide a supportive role of output growth, foreign direct investment, and urbanization in helping accessibility to energy services. These outcomes have strong policy implications for developing economies.

Biomass energy consumption and sustainable development: empirical evidence from Asian economies.

Biomass energy is an important source of energy consumption. It is a renewable, abundant, and easily produced energy source. Its usage supports economies in reducing their dependence on fossil fuels and safeguards national energy security. The literature has extensively explored the association between biomass energy and environmental quality. However, the influence of biomass energy on sustainable development is overlooked. Against this background, the objective of this research study is to empirically scrutinize the utility of biomass consumption as a source of renewable energy for sustainable development in the Asian region. The panel data used in the study is taken from World Development Indicators and Global Material Flows Database for twenty-one Asian countries covering the time 1990-2017. Numerous econometric techniques are used in the study to ensure the robustness of the results. To know the nature of cointegration, the tests designed by Kao (1999) and Pedroni (1999) and second-generation tests, inter alia, have been employed. Furthermore, the cointegration test of Westerlund (2007), among others, is used in this research. Moreover, fully modified ordinary least square, dynamic ordinary least square, and Driscoll and Kraay methods are used to estimate the model. Finally, the conclusion of the study proves the argument that the consumption of biomass as a source of renewable energy has a significantly positive impact on sustainable development in the selected Asian economies. It is recommended that the region should efficiently utilize biomass to the maximum extent to travel on the path of sustainable development.

Toward economic growth without emissions growth: the role of urbanization & industrialization in Pakistan.

The dynamic relationship between economic activity (economic growth) and environmental impact (carbon dioxide emissions) is the most debated topic in the present world. The global world is intended to curb environmental impact up to a threshold level of the 1990s while maintaining the same pace of economic growth. This study analyzes the decoupling of economic activity from environmental impact and its main driving forces from 1980 to 2018 for Pakistan. The decoupling status is examined using Tapio decoupling elasticity analysis. The cointegration and Impulse Response Function (IRF) are employed to explore the role of main decoupling drivers. The Tapio decoupling results exhibit that Pakistan experienced Expensive Negative Decoupling (END) for multiple years. Similarly, the Johanson Juselius (JJ) Cointegration assures the presence of a long-term relationship between the selected variables. The long-term regression estimates show that carbon intensity and urbanization are the main decoupling drivers. The industrialization and economic growth also weaken the decoupling progress in Pakistan. The value addition of the paper is that it exposes industrialization and urbanization as the two prominent factors of both economic growth and carbon emissions. Further, the industrial sector of Pakistan operates on polluted industrial stock, which needs to be replaced with energy-efficient technological stock. The study also added that renewable energy needs to be indulged in the industrial and urban sectors.

An analysis of the effects of human capital on green growth: effects and transmission channels.

In this digitalized world, economies have energetically encouraged green transformation. The empirical findings regarding the nexus between human capital and green growth are relatively inconclusive. The study originally explores the effect of human capital on the green growth of a digital economy like China from 1991 to 2019. To investigate the model empirically, we have applied the ARDL technique. Our results indicate that there is a positive impact of different levels of education on the green growth of China in the long run. Regression results also show that renewable energy consumption, internet use, and financial development lead to expansion in green growth in the long run. Our findings can strengthen the belief of the Chinese government on the advancement of green growth.

How does ICT affect the shadow economy towards environmental preservation? Evidence from a panel of developing and developed nations.

Despite the increasing size of the shadow economy worldwide, more particularly for developing economies, limited scientific attention has been devoted to exploring its diverse impacts, such as the harmful environmental issues that could arise from informal activities. This study aims to investigate ICT impacts of the shadow sector on the environment using two-step system GMM method for two panels of 57 developing and 34 developed nations, spanning the years from 1998 to 2015. Two measures for the dependent variable are used: CO2 emissions from transport activity and liquid energy demand. The size of the shadow economy and ICT are used as independent variables. The empirical evidence suggests four main results. First, the shadow economy harms the environment in the context of developed nations; however, it can reduce environmental degradation in developing economies. Second, ICT hurts the environment for all countries except telephone usage, which favors ecological quality in developing economies. Third, the association between ICT and the shadow economy positively affects the environment in developed countries, but it becomes very weak in developing ones. Fourth, the telephone is the most efficient technology for reducing air pollution in developed economies when adopted in the shadow sector. Public policy should encourage the adoption of new technologies in the shadow sector and the regularization of informal activities in developed economies to mitigate carbon emissions.

Designing a clean environmental framework for Pakistan: analyzing the nonlinear impact of aggregate demand drivers on CO2 emissions.

Aggregate demand in every country is one of the main components of macroeconomics, and Pakistan is no exception. This paper uses a fresh econometric framework to analyze the nonlinear impact of aggregate demand drivers on CO2 emissions in Pakistan by using a nonlinear ARDL approach over the data period from 1975 to 2019. The linear findings reveal that consumption and government expenditure indicates deteriorating effects on carbon emissions in long run in Pakistan. However, nonlinear findings revealed that positive change in government expenditure and trade has positive effects on carbon emissions. The positive change in investment has a negative significant and meaningful effect on the environment in Pakistan and asymmetric findings are also country-specific. Therefore, this study offers a few important policy implications for theorists, academics, and policymakers of Pakistan as well developing economies.

Revealing the effectiveness of environmental policy stringency and environmental law on environmental performance: does asymmetry matter?

Environmental stringency policy shocks and environmental tax have become fundamental policy tools for mitigating the degradation of the environment. The study explores the effects of environmental tax and environmental stringency policy shocks in the reduction of pollution emissions in China for the time 1993 to 2019. This study is a pioneer in assessing the simultaneous impact of these two policy instruments on pollution emissions in China. For empirical investigation, the study employed NARDL estimation techniques. The NARDL results show that positive shocks in environmental tax reduce N2O emissions by 0.03%, PM2.5 emissions by 0.13%, CO2 emissions by 0.18%, and GHGs emissions by 0.01%, however, negative shocks in environmental tax increase N2O emissions by 0.01%, PM2.5 emissions by 0.07%, CO2 emissions by 0.28%, GHGs emissions by 0.17% in the long run. The long-run results also show that positive shocks in environmental policy stringency reduced CO2 emissions by 0.94%, GHGs emissions by 0.77%, while negative shocks in environmental policy stringency increased N2O emissions by 0.17%, PM2.5 emissions by 0.50%, CO2 emissions by 0.63%. The findings suggest vigorous policy implications.

Clean energy consumption and CO2 emissions: does China reduce some pollution burdens through environmental regulation?

Environmental regulations are considered a prerequisite for environmental performance. However, very limited studies have explored the asymmetric relationship between clean energy consumption, environmental regulation, and CO2 emissions. This study scrutinizes the asymmetry phenomenon in environmental regulation-clean energy consumption and environmental quality nexus in China by using the time series nonlinear ARDL approach by covering the period 1993-2019. The result reveals that the impact of environmental regulation on clean energy consumption and CO2 emissions is asymmetric. A positive change in environmental regulation has a positive effect on clean energy consumption but a negative impact on CO2 emissions in the long run. While a negative change in environmental regulation has insignificant effects on clean energy consumption and CO2 emissions in the long run. The study suggests that China should need to revisit environmental regulation policies that could help in improving environmental quality.

A comparative analysis of nuclear energy consumption and CO2 emissions nexus: empirical evidence from the global economy and income groups.

This study explores the dynamic links of clean energy sources with CO2 emissions for a global panel of countries using static and dynamic heterogeneous panel techniques over the period 1990-2014. We employ the fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS), Stock and Watson dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS), mean group (MG), augmented mean group (AMG), common correlated effects mean group (CCEMG), and dynamic common correlated effects mean group (DCCEMG) techniques to estimate the co-integration coefficients of the panels and heterogeneous income groups of countries, respectively. The results suggest that the deployment of nuclear energy mitigates CO2 emissions at the global level and across heterogeneous income groups. Moreover, renewable energy and energy efficiency support decarbonization across all income groups. However, economic growth and urbanization escalate carbon emissions. This study suggests that sampled economies need to boost the share of renewable and nuclear energy in their energy mix to lower carbon emissions. Policymakers in these countries need to invest more in clean energy sources and green technologies to enhance their supply and accessibility.

Analyzing the nexus of COVID-19 and natural resources and commodities: Evidence from time-varying causality.

Even though a few studies have focused on natural resources and commodity sectors by considering the pandemic, they have only compared their status in pre-COVID19 to post-COVID19. None of the studies has directly examined the causal relationship between the pandemic, and natural resource index and the primary commodity-related sector indices. This study fills the gap of exploring the dynamic association between them by analyzing the causal relationship between the COVID19, and natural resources index and the primary commodity-related sectors (i.e., agribusiness, energy, and metals & mining) by applying a novel time-varying causality test on daily data from January 23, 2020, to November 12, 2021. The empirical results support the presence of time-varying causality from COVID19 to natural resources, agribusiness, energy and metals & mining. The results obtained from the rolling window algorithm support causal linkages between the variables however at several points it fails to capture the dynamics of linkages between the variables which is captured by the recursive window algorithm. The outcome is robust when the pandemic is proxied by either number of cases or deaths. Similarly, the findings obtained from heteroskedastic-robust specification also validate our findings. Several policy implications are further discussed in the study.

Growing green through biomass energy consumption: the role of natural resource and globalization in a world economy.

Energy consumption supports the basic needs of society. The way energy is produced matters for the global economy and environmental quality. The present study explores the impact of biomass energy consumption on environmental quality across heterogeneous income groups over the period 1971-2018. The cointegration is analyzed through the Wester-Lund cointegration test. The study used Fully Modified (FMOLS) and Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) to examine the long-run relationship between biomass energy and environmental quality in the presence of economic growth, urbanization, natural resource, and globalization. The results validate the potential of biomass energy consumption for emission reduction in the high-income group while environmental deteriorating role in upper-middle-income, lower-middle-income, and low-income groups. Our empirical findings support an inverted U-shaped relationship in the high-income and upper-middle-income groups while a U-shaped relationship between income and environmental quality exists in lower-middle-income and low-income groups. Globalization improves environmental quality in high-income and upper-middle-income groups while resulting in higher emissions in lower-middle, and low-income economies. Natural resource rent degrades the environment in high-income economies while lowering emissions in upper-middle, lower, and low-income economies. The results from Pooled Mean group and Driscoll Kray estimation also support these findings.

Income inequality, financial development, and ecological footprint: fresh evidence from an asymmetric analysis.

The emerging environmental concerns are entrenched in social issues, largely stem from income differences and power disparity. Income distribution and environmental disruption are increasingly pointed as obstacles in securing sustainable development goals and environmental preservation. The existing empirical studies have explored the environmental pollution impact of income inequality. However, the results are conflicting, and little attention has been paid to explore the short and long-run environmental impacts from a national viewpoint. Similarly, the role of aggregate income and financial sector for environmental quality has attracted considerable attention and many studies have provided conflicting empirical evidence. The literature generally ignores the importance of relative income in explaining environmental outcomes and also assumes symmetric association, ignoring asymmetric shocks. The present study explores the role of nonlinear associations in forming the links between income distribution and environmental quality using linear and nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag models from 1972 to 2018. The study follows the extended environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) approach. The results suggest that inequality promotes environmental pollution. Further financial development also escalates carbon emissions. The nonlinear analysis confirms the asymmetric effect of inequality on ecological footprint. The EKC, however, is not validated for Pakistan. The results suggest important policy implications.

Investigating the links between ICTs, passenger transportation, and environmental sustainability.

This paper investigates linkages between ICTs, passenger transportation, and environmental sustainability with regard to a panel dataset of 46 countries over the years 1998-2016. Telephone and internet penetration are employed to measure ICTs, while environmental damages are proxied in terms of three different indicators related to carbon emissions coming from different sources. The empirical methodology employs the 2-step system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) with the consideration of two empirical specifications: without and with conditioning variables (per capita GDP growth, urbanization, and energy consumption). The findings show that the association between ICTs and passenger transportation activity can positively affect environmental sustainability with regard to carbon emission reductions. Second, the adoption of the telephone in the road transport sector is more efficient than the internet in reducing carbon emissions. Third, internet connectivity is better employed in the air and rail passenger sectors. Public policies and their effective implementations are discussed.

Environmental costs of political instability in Pakistan: policy options for clean energy consumption and environment.

Using time series data of Pakistan from 1990 to 2019, this study explores the asymmetric effects of political instability on clean energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The results from the traditional ARDL model show that political stability lessens environmental damage by reducing CO2 emissions in the long run. However, when we used the nonlinear ARDL approach, we found that political instability not only reduces the consumption of clean energy but also leads to damage environmental quality in the long run in Pakistan,while political stability not only increases the consumption of clean energy but also helps improve environmental quality in the short run in Pakistan. Thus, macroeconomic policies to promote expansion in clean energy consumption will directly stimulate green economic growth and environmental quality.

Environmental benefit of clean energy consumption: can BRICS economies achieve environmental sustainability through human capital?

This paper scrutinizes the asymmetric impact of education and education expenditure on clean energy consumption and CO2 emissions in the BRICS economies using annual data for the period 1991-2019. The analysis employs a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) framework. Findings unfold that a positive change in education contributes to increasing clean energy consumption in Brazil, Russia, India, and China. This finding implies that a negative change in education contributes to reducing clean energy consumption in Brazil, Russia, and India in the long run. Nonetheless, a positive change in education expenditure increased the clean energy consumption in Brazil, Russia, and India, while it has decreased in South Africa. On the dark side, a negative change in education expenditure degrades clean energy consumption in India, China, and South Africa in the long run. The asymmetric empirical results of CO2 emissions are mixed, economy-specific, and vary across group countries in the long run. We find that the education and education expenditure has long-run asymmetric effects in BRICS industries. Thus empirical findings give us robust policy implications for BRICS economies.