Abstract
The sustainable environment has been a desired situation around the world for the last few decades. Environmental contaminations can be a consequence of various economic activities. Different socio-economic factors influence the environment positively or negatively. Many previous studies have resulted in the efficient allocation of inputs as an environment-friendly component. This paper investigates the effects of energy efficiency on ecological footprint in the ASEAN region using balanced panel data from 2001 to 2019. First, this paper technically derives the energy efficiency, using the stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) of the translog production type of single output and multiple inputs. Findings of the SFA show that the Philippines and Singapore have the highest energy efficiency (94%) and Laos has the lowest energy efficiency (85%) in the ASEAN region. The estimated average efficiency score of the ASEAN region was around 90%, ranging from 85% to 96%, indicating that there is still 10% room for improvement in energy efficiency. Second, this study employed the panel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model to explore the short run and long run impact of technically derived energy efficiency on ecological footprint in the ASEAN region. Results of the panel ARDL model show that energy efficiency is a reducing factor of ecological footprint in the long run. Moreover, energy efficiency plays a significant role to control the environmental contaminations. In addition, results of this study also explored that urbanization is an increasing factor of ecological footprint, and investment in agriculture is also beneficial for the environment. Moreover, to obtain the directional nature of the associations between the ecological footprint and its independent variables, this paper has employed the paired-panel Granger causality test. The results of the paired wise panel Granger causality test also confirm that the energy efficiency, urbanization, and investment in agriculture cause ecological footprint. Finally, this study recommends that efficient utilization of energy resources as well as investment in agriculture are necessary for sustainable environment.
Highlights
Economic activities around the world have raised the challenges of environmental degradation and pollution
This study deals with energy consumption (EC), agricultural land (AL), labor employed in agriculture (LA), capital stock in agriculture (CS), use of fertilizers (FR) and pesticides (PS) as factors of production and gross agricultural production (Y) as agricultural production while calculating energy efficiency
This paper explored the impact of energy efficiency on ecological footprint in the ASEAN region
Summary
Economic activities around the world have raised the challenges of environmental degradation and pollution. The activities involve industrial development, rapid urbanization, and advanced agricultural practices [1]. This issue of rapid growth must be controlled at zero or close to zero to sustain the economic growth of an economy [2]. The ecological footprint is widely praised as a heuristic, effective and pedagogical representative of the current environmental situation related to the use of human resources [4]. It has been a controversial issue in relation to ecological footprint measurement techniques around the world. Land area is considered the most suitable measure of ecological footprint globally [5,6]
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