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The impact of economic growth, energy consumption, trade openness, and financial development on carbon emissions: empirical evidence from Malaysia

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Abstract

Globally, the rising concentration of anthropogenic greenhouse gases emission in the atmosphere is extremely detrimental to the environment. The high concentration among all greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide emission. Therefore, this study explores the linkages between energy consumption, trade openness, globalization, urbanization, and carbon dioxide emission for Malaysia over the spans from 1978 to 2018. ARDL bound testing model was employed to investigate involvement in the elevation of carbon dioxide emissions in the economy. The study illustrates that a 1% growth in energy consumption, trade openness, and urbanization will deteriorate the environment by 0.18%, 0.03%, and 2.51% respectively. Further, variance decomposition analysis predicts that all the determinants in the study have significantly caused carbon dioxide emission in Malaysia. The paper presents scientific support for further studies and argues for the use of innovation shocks as a policy instrument for a prosperous future by formulating more successful environmental policies.

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Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the World Bank repository, available at http://dataworldbankorg/country.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 71673223).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Economics and Management, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, 712100, China

    Zhanar Nurgazina, Uzair Ali, Mansoor Ahmed Koondhar & Qian Lu

  2. School of Economics, Hainan University, Haikou, 570228, China

    Zhanar Nurgazina

  3. Department of Economics and Business Administration, University of Education, Lahore, (Faisalabad Campus), Faisalabad, 38000, Pakistan

    Arif Ullah

Authors
  1. Zhanar Nurgazina
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  2. Arif Ullah
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  3. Uzair Ali
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  4. Mansoor Ahmed Koondhar
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  5. Qian Lu
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Contributions

Z.N. — conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, resources, writing—original draft preparation. A.U. — formal analysis, writing—review, and editing. U.A., M.A.K. — writing—review, and editing. L.Q. — supervision, project administration, funding acquisition. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Qian Lu.

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Nurgazina, Z., Ullah, A., Ali, U. et al. The impact of economic growth, energy consumption, trade openness, and financial development on carbon emissions: empirical evidence from Malaysia. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 60195–60208 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14930-2

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