Unraveling the role of Financial Risk, social globalization and Economic Risk towards attaining sustainable environment in China: Does resources curse still holds

In recent empirical studies, CO2 emissions and ecological footprint (EF) have faced criticism due to their limited ability to assess pollution, as they do not account for how nature satisfies biocapacity or ecological needs. The ecological footprint only considers environmental deterioration resulting from human demand for natural resources. To address this limitation, the study adopts the load capacity factor (LF) as a metric to evaluate ecological quality, which covers both the supply and demand aspects of nature. This metric enables a more comprehensive evaluation ecological quality by analysing both EF and biocapacity simultaneously. Thus, the research addresses a gap in the existing literature by using LF to provide a more detailed evaluation of ecological quality. Additionally, this research investigates the role of economic risk, financial risk, natural resources, economic growth, and social globalization on three different ecological proxies (load capacity factor, CO2 emissions and ecological footprint) in China by using the ARDL estimators. Results from the ARDL estimators highlight that economic risk and social globalization boost environmental quality, while natural resources, economic growth, and financial risk mitigate ecological quality in China. From these results, the research proposes essential policy implications for China to attain Sustainable Development Goals 8, 12, 13, and 17.