Dynamic Impacts of Economic Growth, Renewable Energy Use, Urbanization, and Tourism on Carbon Dioxide Emissions in Argentina

This study aims to investigate the dynamic impacts of economic growth, renewable energy use, urbanization, and tourism on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in Argentina. Time series data from 1990 to 2019 were utilized by applying the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach followed by the Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) method. The ARDL bounds test revealed evidence of cointegration among the variables. The DOLS findings revealed that an increase in economic growth, urbanization, and tourism by 1% for each variable would increase CO2 emissions by 0.51%, 0.45%, and 0.04%, respectively. Conversely, a 1% increase in renewable energy use may lead to CO2 emissions reduction by 0.14% in the long run. The estimated results are robust to alternative estimators such as fully modified least squares (FMOLS) and canonical cointegrating regression (CCR). In addition, the pairwise Granger causality test was utilized to capture the causal linkage between the variables. This article puts forward policy recommendations in the areas of low-carbon economy, promoting renewable energy use, sustainable urbanization, and eco-friendly tourism which would ensure environmental sustainability by reducing emissions.