Examining the role of ICT, transportation energy consumption, and urbanization in CO2 emissions in Asia: a threshold analysis

• Published in: Environmental science and pollution research international 2023-07, Vol.30 (32), p.78482-78494
• Main Authors: Batool, Zakia, Ahmed, Naeem, Luqman, Muhammad
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aquatic Pollution; Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution; Carbon dioxide; Carbon dioxide emissions; Dependent variables; Earth and Environmental Science; Ecotoxicology; Emission; Emissions; Empirical analysis; Energy consumption; Environment; Environmental Chemistry; Environmental Health; Environmental quality; Environmental science; Research Article; Scale effect; Stochasticity; Sustainable transportation; Transportation energy; Transportation industry; Urban development; Urban sprawl; Urbanization; Waste Water Technology; Water Management; Water Pollution Control
• ISSN: 1614-7499; 0944-1344; 1614-7499
• DOI: 10.1007/s11356-023-27995-y

ICT is viewed in earlier research as a double-edged sword that may either help or hurt the environment. Asian nations’ ICT penetration has significantly expanded in recent years, and they are eager to bring about a digital revolution by building up their ICT infrastructure while consuming less energy for transportation and urban growth. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to investigate how ICT might reduce CO 2 emissions through the use of transport energy and urban development. Empirical and theoretical debates have been remaining ambiguous and contentious topic of whether energy consumed by the transport sector and urbanization causes CO 2 emanation in Asia, and what role ICT played in determining the level of CO 2 remains unanswered. This study adds to the ongoing discussion for sustainable transportation in ten Asian nations for 30 years that concentrate on the relationship between the energy consumption of transport, urbanization, ICT, and carbon emanation (1990–2020) and checked the validity of EKC. The STIRPAT and panel threshold models having two regimes are used to explore the stochastic impacts of the dependent and explanatory variables. We have divided explanatory into two categories, that is, the threshold variable ICT and the regime-dependent variables urbanization and transport energy consumption. Our results confirm that the EKC hypothesis holds in these Asian economies. Thus, our findings indicate that the environmental quality improves in terms of reduction in CO 2 emissions when ICT passes the threshold level due to the technological advancement in ICT dominating the scale effect induced by ICT. Furthermore, the possible policy recommendations are discussed according to the findings.