Economic Activities and Management Issues for the Environment: An Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) and STIRPAT Analysis in Turkey

Abstract

The emission of air pollutants from energy production and consumption is a major cause of environmental problems. In addition, urbanisation and CO2 emissions have become major environmental concerns that are closely related to climate change and sustainable economic growth. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the long-run relationship among CO2 emissions, energy consumption, economic activities, and management issues for Turkey for the period between 1980 and 2021. The STIRPAT hypothesis and the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis were employed by using dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) and ARDL bound methodologies for these goals. The findings indicate that there is a long-run relationship between variables of the STIRPAT model. The coefficient of economic expansion and energy consumption affected CO2 emissions positively, which means that energy consumption and the expansion of economic activity have significant effects on environmental degradation. Those results are also confirmed by the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) model. In addition, the N-shaped environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) is developed for Turkey. The DCC model also shows that economic growth increases CO2 emissions significantly, and energy productivity can be considered for decreasing CO2 emissions.