Assessing the environmental sustainability corridor: linking oil consumption, hydro energy consumption, and ecological footprint in Turkey.

Abstract

Climate change has been a topic of significant discourse and debate among scholars and policy makers for several decades. In recent decades, it has become a major problem for the entire human race. Therefore, the present research evaluates the impact of oil consumption, hydro energy use, population density, and economic growth on ecological footprint in Turkey for the period from 1965QI to 2018Q4. This paper uses the BDS test to assess the nonlinearity of the variables in the pre-estimation analysis. The results of the test reveal that non-linearity occurs in all of the variables used in this study. As a consequence, using traditional linear methodologies would produce erroneous results. Our research uses the quantile techniques (quantile cointegration, quantile causality, quantile-on-quantile regression), which are recently developed nonlinear estimate methodologies to assess these associations. The results from the study reveal that oil consumption, hydro energy use, population density, and economic growth contribute to environmental degradation in Turkey in majority of the quantiles. The Granger Causality in Quantiles result also gives credence to the results. The study proposes policy recommendation based on these results.