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Digitalized world and carbon footprints: does digitalization really matter for sustainable environment?

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Abstract

There is a growing demand for energy to support economic and social development. There will be many shifts in the energy sector as a result of digitization. Hence, we aim analyzing the linkage between digitalization and environment sustainability by incorporating energy consumption as a moderating factor using data of UK from 1990 to 2020. Different dimensions of digitalization are used as explanatory variables, ecological and carbon footprints are used as outcomes and energy consumption is used as moderator. The findings of autoregressive distributed lag model show that internet users and technological advancement (fixed telephone subscription and mobile cellular) are negatively (positively) linked with ecological and carbon footprints. Energy consumption causes to enhance ecological and carbon footprints and plays an antagonistic role in the nexus of internet users, technological advancement, and ecological and carbon footprints. The effects of mobile cellular and fixed telephone subscription have increased in the presence of energy consumption as moderator which exhibits that energy consumption plays an enhancing role in the links between mobile cellular, fixed telephone subscription and ecological and carbon footprints. The results underscore the importance of taking a holistic approach to addressing the environmental impact of digital technologies. By promoting sustainable communication practices and investing in the development of more energy-efficient technologies, practitioners, managers, and society as a whole can work together to reduce the carbon and ecological footprints of digital technologies and create a more sustainable future for all.

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Data availability

The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Administrative and Management Sciences, Khwaja Fareed University of Engineering and Information Technology, Rahim Yar Kan, Pakistan

    Muhammad Zulfiqar

  2. Lyallpur Business School, Government College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan

    Safdar Husain Tahir & Muhammad Rizwan Ullah

  3. School of Accounting, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, Dalian, China

    Sadeen Ghafoor

Authors
  1. Muhammad Zulfiqar
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  2. Safdar Husain Tahir
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  3. Muhammad Rizwan Ullah
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  4. Sadeen Ghafoor
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Contributions

Conceptualization, done by M.Z and M.R.U; methodology, formed by S.H.T and M.Z.; software and validation, performed by S.H.T and M.R.U; formal analysis did by M.R.U; investigation, resources, data curation, performed S.G and M.Z; writing—original draft preparation done by M.R.U and S.G; writing—review and editing by M.Z and S.H.T; visualization, and supervision by M.R.U and S.G.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Muhammad Rizwan Ullah.

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Zulfiqar, M., Tahir, S.H., Ullah, M.R. et al. Digitalized world and carbon footprints: does digitalization really matter for sustainable environment?. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 88789–88802 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-28332-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-28332-z

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