Abstract
The present study attempts to empirically establish the global environmental impacts of press freedom and internet access while controlling for the role of industry. This is based on the premise that the press' role as information disseminator can be strategic to the sustainable development paradigm. The study employs a generalized method of moment technique and a bias corrected fixed effects estimator within a panel dataset of 153 countries over the 2002 to 2016 study period. The present study finds that when the moderation effect of industry is not controlled for, a 1% increase press freedom is associated with a 0.022% decrease in CO2 emissions. When the non-linear effect of internet access is not controlled for, a 1% increase in internet access is associated with a 0.018% increase in CO2 emissions. With the incorporation of non-linearities, internet access has an inverted U-shape relationship with CO2 emissions with a required access penetration of 76.2% before its carbon mitigation threshold can be attained. Also, press freedom constrains emissions in economies with a small industry size but induces emissions in economies with a large industry size. Sub-sample estimations show inter-alia —that while internet access is environmentally degrading in lower-middle income countries, it mitigates pollution in high income countries. Policy implications include the improvement of internet access penetration on a global scale to attain the threshold required to counterbalance the effect of global warming as well as engaging media stakeholders on the need to identify with cleaner production practices and transmission of same practices to the greater society in order to enhance sustainable development.
Published Version
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