Role of country risks and renewable energy consumption on environmental quality: Evidence from MINT countries.

This study focuses on uncovering the effect of country risks and renewable energy consumption on environmental quality. In this context, the study examines Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey (MINT) nations; takes economic growth, trade openness, and urbanization into account; includes data from 1990 to 2018; applies cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) as the main model while common correlated effects mean group (CCEMG) and augmented mean group (AMG) for robustness checks. The empirical results show that (i) economic growth, political risk, urbanization, and trade openness contribute to an increase in ecological footprint; (ii) economic and financial risks as well as renewable energy use have a positive influence on environmental quality; (iii) a unidirectional causality exists from economic risk, financial risk, political risk, economic growth, urbanization, and trade openness to the ecological footprint: (iv) the validity of the EKC hypothesis for the MINT economies is verified; (v) the robustness of CS-ARDL results are validated by CCEMG and AMG approaches. Based on these results, policymakers should promote a sustainable environment to lessen the ecological footprint. Additionally, governments should firmly support investments in green technology as well as economic and financial stability to boost energy efficiency and promote the adoption and usage of energy-saving products. EF: Ecological Footprint; EG: Economic Growth; EG2: Economic Growth Square; TO: Trade Openness; URB: Urbanization; RENC: Renewable Energy Use; ER: Economic Risk; FR: Financial Risk; PR: Political Risk. [Display omitted] • The study focuses on the role of country risks and renewable energy on the EF. • The study exşamines MINT countries for the period between 1990 and 2018. • The study applies second-generation panel data approaches as CS-ARDL, AMG, CCEMG. • Economic growth, political risk, urbanization, and trade openness contribute to the EF. • Economic risk, financial risk, and renewable energy have a developing influence on the EF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]