Towards a Green State: A Comparative Study on OECD Countries through Fuzzy-Set Analysis

Taewook Huh, Yunyoung Kim and Jiyoung Hailiey Kim
Additional contact information
Taewook Huh: Moon Soul Graduate School of Future Strategy, KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Tech.), Daejeon 34141, Korea
Yunyoung Kim: The Incheon Institute, Incheon 22711, Korea
Jiyoung Hailiey Kim: Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University, 1 Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 08826, Korea

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 9, 1-17

Abstract: This study aims to develop an empirical measurement framework of the green state and compare twenty-four OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries’ cases through the fuzzy-set multiple conjunctural analysis and the ideal type analysis. Based on the analysis model of the outcome set (Sustainable Development Goal Index) and the causal sets of seven variables on the four green state categories (‘ecological authoritarian state’, ‘ecological modern state’, ‘ecological democracy state’, and ‘ecological welfare state’), this study reveals the following results. Among OECD member countries, if ones have high environmental tax, high environmental innovation (patent), high economic development and democracy, high levels of environmental governance and social expenditure, or have high economic development and democracy, and high levels of environmental governance and environmental health, they can be seen to have reached a high level of green state (consistency: 0.980, total coverage: 0.675). Also, the thirteen ideal types of green state of twenty-four OECD countries were derived. Norway (fuzzy-set membership score of 0.515) is a country of Type 1, with a characteristic of ‘strong green state’ having all high features of the four green state categories. Greece (membership score, 0.692) and Ireland (0.577) belong to Type 13, characterized by ‘weak green state’ with all four low features. As a result, the green state types of the twenty-four OECD countries can be assorted into five levels: ‘Strong Green State’, ‘Quasi-Strong Green State’, ‘Quasi-Green State’, ‘Quasi-Weak Green State’, and ‘Weak Green State’.

Keywords: green state; fuzzy-set multiple conjunctural analysis; fuzzy-set ideal type analysis; OECD countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/9/3181/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/9/3181/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:9:p:3181-:d:168023

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().