An empirical study on the determinants of environmental pollution in Türkiye (1970-2022)

The primary aim of this thesis is to examine the determinants of environmental pollution in Turkey for the period 1970-2022 and to test the validity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve, Pollution Haven, and Pollution Halo Hypotheses. In this context, the effects of the most debated and environmentally impactful variables in the literature economic growth, energy consumption, industrialization, trade openness, foreign direct investment, and urbanization on the ecological footprint are analyzed using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Bound Test. The stationarity of the variables is tested using the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and Phillips Perron (PP) unit root tests. Based on the stationarity results, the ARDL bound test is applied, and a long-term cointegration relationship is found. The long-term coefficients of the variables are estimated using the ARDL model. The Error Correction Model (ECM) is used to evaluate the short-term coefficients of the variables. The analysis results indicate that, in the long term, economic growth, energy consumption, industrialization, trade openness, and foreign direct investment positively impact the ecological footprint, while urbanization negatively impacts it, contrary to mainstream studies in the literature. Moreover, the Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis is found to be valid in both the long and short term in Turkey. Additionally, the Pollution Haven Hypothesis is confirmed only in the long term. Keywords: Ecological Footprint, ARDL Bound Test, Environmental Pollution, Türkiye