The role of environmental innovation on ecological footprint in nations with high technology exports concentrations in international trade

Özgür Ömer Ersin, Ayfer Ustabaş and Ojonugwa Usman ()

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2024, vol. 208, issue C

Abstract: This study focuses on four major high-technology exporting countries––the USA, Germany, France, and China––to explore the long and short-run associations among ecological footprint, environmental technology patents, high-technology exports, and economic growth. The sample covering 1988–2019 is subject to a set of structural breaks, including 2009 Global Recession in addition to uncertainty in the order of integration captured by unit root tests, which provide basis for novel Fourier ARDL and Fourier Toda-Yamamoto causality methods. The Fourier ARDL findings reveal the importance of environmental technology innovations in dampening the level of ecological footprints and promoting a more sustainable environment in the USA, Germany, and France, whereas more high-technology exports in international trade worsen the ecological footprints in these countries in addition to the negative effects of economic growth in all countries including China. In contrast, high-technology exports appear to mitigate ecological footprint in China, however, eco-friendly technologies fail to reduce ecological footprints as in other analysed nations. The causality tests indicate bidirectional and unidirectional causal relationships among variables with the exception of China where the neutrality hypothesis holds between economic growth and ecological patents and also high-technology exports and ecological patents. These findings provide important insights in achieving sustainable development.

Keywords: Sustainable development; Patents on environmental technologies; High-technology exports; Gross domestic product; Ecological footprint; Environmental innovation; Causality; Fourier; Cointegration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162524005018
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:tefoso:v:208:y:2024:i:c:s0040162524005018

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2024.123703

Access Statistics for this article

Technological Forecasting and Social Change is currently edited by Fred Phillips

More articles in Technological Forecasting and Social Change from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().