ICT, foreign direct investment and environmental pollution in major Asia Pacific countries

This paper examines the effect of ICT and FDI on environmental pollution in major Asia Pacific countries during the year 1990-2018. We use Pooled Mean Group (PMG) and Dumitrescu-Hurlin Panel Causality for the estimation of the results. Our results suggest that ICT and FDI affect the carbon emissions or environmental pollution negatively. This implies that with the rise in ICT infrastructure and FDI inflows, environmental pollution decreases significantly in the long run. The Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality results suggest the existence of bidirectional causality among ICT and FDI which implies that increase in foreign investment leads to increase in ICT infrastructure and also, with increasing ICT infrastructure, the foreign investment increases in the Asia Pacific countries. On the policy forefront, the main focus should be targeted towards promoting FDI and ICT infrastructure in order to facilitate sustainable economic development in the Asia Pacific countries.

Automated summary

The study shows that ICT and FDI have a negative impact on environmental pollution in Asia Pacific countries, with an increase in ICT infrastructure and foreign investment leading to a significant decrease in pollution in the long term. Additionally, it is found that there is a bidirectional causality between ICT and FDI.