Technological innovation and environmental quality nexus in India: Does inward remittance matter?

Abstract

This article examines the relationships between technological innovation and environmental quality in India relying on the availability of annual data from 1980 to 2018. Both inward remittances and economic growth are also considered as key determinants in CO2 emissions and technological innovation functions. The result from utilizing autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing cointegration approach indicates the existence of long‐run relationship between the series. The combined cointegration test is also used as a result robust checking and validating the long‐run relationship. While considering the carbon dioxide emissions function, the findings document that technological innovation and economic growth degrade environmental quality in India via promoting atmospheric emissions in the long‐run, whereas U‐shaped relationship between inward remittances and carbon dioxide emissions is established. Further considering the technological innovation function, findings clearly indicate that both carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth promote the new technological innovation in the long‐run and also fails to confirm the inverted U‐shaped relationship between remittances inflows and technological innovation. On the policy front, we suggest that technological innovation should be made eco‐friendly and heavy utilization of inward remittances on pollution‐driving households’ appliances need to be discouraged in India for mitigating both climate change and global warming in the long‐run.