Exploring the Impacts of Renewable Energy, Environmental Regulations, and Democracy on Ecological Footprints in the Next Eleven Nations

Jintian Wang, Shouchang You, Ephraim Bonah Agyekum, Clement Matasane and Solomon Eghosa Uhunamure ()
Additional contact information
Shouchang You: School of Economics, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo 255000, China
Ephraim Bonah Agyekum: Department of Nuclear and Renewable Energy, Ural Federal University Named after the First President of Russia Boris Yeltsin, 19 Mira Street, 620002 Ekaterinburg, Russia
Clement Matasane: Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, P.O. Box 652, Cape Town 8000, South Africa
Solomon Eghosa Uhunamure: Faculty of Applied Sciences, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, P.O. Box 652, Cape Town 8000, South Africa

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 19, 1-13

Abstract: Economies are making environmental regulations to achieve sustainable development and mitigate environmental pollution. However, these regulations cannot provide effective results unless implemented properly. The role of the government is fundamental in this regard. In this context, this research probes the impacts of democracy, environmental regulations, renewable energy, globalization, and economic growth on ecological footprints in N-11 countries from 1990 to 2018. For statistical analysis, this work applies the cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lags (CS-ARDL) methods. This method efficiently provides robust findings for panel time series data because they counter the cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity while providing the results. Moreover, augmented mean group (AMG) and fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) are used to check the robustness of the findings. The results show that environmental regulation significantly mitigates ecological footprint, while economic growth escalates footprints in N-11 countries. In addition, democratic quality, renewable energy consumption, and globalization are contributing factors to environmental quality. Hence, this research presents important policy implications for the N-11 countries in that they need to enhance democratic accountability. This will assist them to launch an effective environmental policy. Effective environmental policy will assist in increasing renewable energy, which will ultimately enhance the environmental quality.

Keywords: democracy; environmental regulations; environmental sustainability; renewable energy; N-11 countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/19/11909/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/19/11909/ (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:14:y:2022:i:19:p:11909-:d:921139

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 ().