The review of the achieved degree of sustainable development in South Eastern Europe—The use of linear regression method

Abstract

The need for preservation and adequate management of the quality of environment requires the development of new methods and techniques by which the achieved degree of sustainable development can be defined as well as the laws regarding the relationship among its subsystems. Main objective of research is to point to a strong contradiction between the development of ecological and economic subsystems. In order to improve previous research, this study suggests the use of linear evaluation, by which it is possible to determine the exact degree of contradiction between these two subsystems and to define the regularities as well as the deviations. Authors present the essential steps that were used. Conducted by the method of linear regression this research shows a significant negative correlation between ecological and economic subsystem indicators, whereas its value R2 0.58 proves the expected contradiction that exists between the two previously mentioned subsystems. By observing the sustainable development as a two-dimensional system that includes ecological and economic indicators, the authors suggest the methodology to modelling the relationship between economic and ecological development as an orthogonal distance between the degree of the current state measured by the relation between economic and ecological indicators of sustainable development and the degree which was obtained in a traditional way. The method used in this research proved to be extremely suitable for modelling the relationship between ecological and economic subsystems of sustainable development. This research was conducted on a repeated sample of countries of South East Europe by including the data for France and Germany, being two countries on the highest level of development in the European Union.