Testing the long-run impact of economic growth, energy consumption, and globalization on ecological footprint: new evidence from Fourier bootstrap ARDL and Fourier bootstrap Toda–Yamamoto test results

The aim of this study is to investigate the impacts of economic growth, energy consumption, and the economic globalization process on ecological footprints in the top 10 countries that cause the highest carbon dioxide emissions in the world. The analyses were conducted on annual observations from 1970 to 2017 (a different range for each country) employing the Fourier bootstrap ARDL cointegration method developed by Yilanci et al. (2020) and the Fourier bootstrap Toda–Yamamoto causality method developed by Nazlioglu et al. (2016). In the cointegration approach, an additional F-test provides better insights to define degenerate cases and the bootstrap test performance is powerful than the asymptotic test. In this context, Fourier bootstrap ARDL test results revealed that there is a long-term relationship between ecological footprint and economic growth, energy consumption, and economic globalization in seven countries—namely, Canada, China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. According to long-run coefficients, in general, economic growth and energy consumption have negative effects on ecological footprint, whereas economic globalization has a positive effect on the ecological footprint for these countries. To evaluate it more specifically, (i) real gross domestic product per capita has positive and statistically significant coefficients on the ecological footprint in China, India, Indonesia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, except for Germany. (ii) Energy consumption per capita also has positive and statistically significant coefficients on the ecological footprint in China, Germany, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, except for Indonesia. (iii) Finally, the economic globalization process has negative and statistically significant coefficients on the ecological footprint in Canada, China, India, and Saudi Arabia, except for Indonesia. On the other hand, Fourier bootstrap Toda–Yamamoto causality test results show a mixed character. Governments should take action to reduce the negative effects of the climate crisis as immediate as possible, which has been widely expressed recently. Among these, increasing the use of renewable energy sources and new carbon-free technologies in the production process appears as important policy tools.