Abstract
The present era faces adverse effects of the strides recorded in economic advancements of the prior generations thus leading the present generation to growth dilemma. Consequently, there is a conscientious consideration for the ecological effects of economic growth. To resolve the preceding issue, due consideration must be given to harmless growth of which eco-digitalization, green financing, green technology, energy transition, and regularity quality are key determinants. Despite the aforesaid importance, empirical studies advancing this nexus are scarce. Hence, this study contributes to environment empirics by providing empirical evidence for the impacts of the highlighted indicators on sustainable environment in the USA. The study explores quarterly data from 1996Q1 to 2019Q4 based on the novel non-linear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. The pretests’ outcomes show that long-run nexus exists among the variables, whereas the Zivot-Andrew uncovers breakpoint years in the observations. The main findings show that eco-digitalization, green financing, green technology, and renewable energy promote sustainable environment. On the flip side, non-renewable energy and regulatory quality hinder the pathways to sustaining the environment in the USA. Robustness analyses conducted based on FMOL, DOLS, and CCR provide substantial support and validity for the main results. Furthermore, the causality nexus lends empirical support for the existence of bidirectional and unidirectional causalities in the empirical model. Policy insights that drive the paths to sustainability in the US are suggested based on the findings.
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Data availability
The datasets used and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Conceptualization (ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims: Fangbin Han, Ridwan Lanre Ibrahim, Usama Al-Mulali, and Jun Tang. Methodology (development or design of methodology; creation of models): Ridwan Lanre Ibrahim, Fangbin Han, and Jun Tang. Software (programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components): Ridwan Lanre Ibrahim, Fangbin Han, and Jun Tang. Validation (verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/ reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs): Ridwan Lanre Ibrahim, Fangbin Han, Usama Al-Mulali, and Jun Tang. Formal analysis (application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data): Ridwan Lanre Ibrahim, Fangbin Han, and Jun Tang. Investigation (conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection): Ridwan Lanre Ibrahim, Fangbin Han, Usama Al-Mulali, and Jun Tang. Resources (provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools): Ridwan Lanre Ibrahim, Fangbin Han, and Jun Tang. Data curation (management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data, and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse): Ridwan Lanre Ibrahim, Fangbin Han, and Jun Tang. Writing — original draft (preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation): Ridwan Lanre Ibrahim, Fangbin Han, Usama Al-Mulali, and Jun Tang. Writing — review and editing (preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision — including pre-or post-publication stages): Ridwan Lanre Ibrahim, Fangbin Han, Usama Al-Mulali, and Jun Tang. Visualization (preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation): Fangbin Han, Ridwan Lanre Ibrahim, and Usama Al-Mulali. Supervision (oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team): Usama Al-Mulali and Ridwan Lanre Ibrahim. Project administration (management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution): Ridwan Lanre Ibrahim. Funding acquisition (acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication): not applicable.
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Han, F., Ibrahim, R.L., Tang, J. et al. Do the asymmetric effects of eco-digitalization amidst energy transition make or mar the strides toward environmental sustainability in the USA?. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 123412–123426 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-31007-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-31007-4