Nexus between natural resources, financial development, green innovation and environmental sustainability in China: Fresh insight from novel quantile ARDL

Abstract

The emerging economies are now heading toward extraordinary economic growth momentum with the rising concern of global environmental sustainability. From this perspective, this study investigates the role of natural resource rent (NRR), financial development (FDP), green technology innovation (GTI), and economic growth (GDP) in influencing environmental sustainability in China from 1990 to 2020. The study leverages the novel Quantile Autoregressive Distributed Lagged (QARDL) approach to integrate asymmetric patterns and address socio-economic shocks over the last three decades. The QARDL is advantageous for portraying environmental sustainability dependence patterns across diverse data distribution. The empirical findings reveal that NRR, FDP, and GDP positively influenced the carbon emission at higher and lower emissions quantiles. In contrast, green technology innovation significantly mitigates emissions across all quantiles. Notably, the influence of all regressors substantially varied across lower, medium, and higher emissions quantiles, suggesting in-depth insight into resource cruse and sustainable development in China.