Investigating the effects of globalization, industrialization and urbanization on environmental degradation: An econometric application for Turkey

This study examines how income, energy consumption, globalization, economic, globalization, trade globalization, financial globalization, industrialization, urbanization, and financial development impacted Turkey's environmental degradation indicators (ecological footprint and carbon dioxide emissions) for the 1980-2016 period in the context of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis (EKCH). For each environmental degradation indicator, based on the globalization index and its sub-indices, four models are estimated by employing the augmented autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach. The main findings of this study can be summarized as follows: (i) The EKCH is valid neither for ecological footprint nor for carbon dioxide emissions in Turkey. (ii) Energy consumption increases ecological footprint in the short-run and carbon dioxide emissions in the long-run. (iii) In the long-run, globalization and its sub-indicators (economic, trade and financial globalization) reduce ecological footprint. (iv) Trade globalization decreases carbon dioxide emissions in the long-run whereas other globalization indicators do not significantly affect carbon dioxide emissions. (v) Industrialization amplifies ecological footprint in the long-run, and increases carbon dioxide emissions in the short-run and/or in the long-run. (vi) Urbanization intensifies environmental degradation both in the long-run and in the short-run. (vii) Financial development worsens environmental degradation only in the short-run. Based on these results, various policy suggestions are put forward.