Positive side effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on environmental sustainability: evidence from the quadrilateral security dialogue countries

Purpose The eruption of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has pointedly subdued global economic growth and producing significant impact on environment. As a medicine or a treatment is yet available at mass level, social distancing and lockdown is expected the key way to avert it. Some outcome advocates that lockdown strategies considered to reduce air pollution by curtailing the carbon emission. Current investigation strives to affirm the impact of lockdown and social distancing policy due to covid-19 outbreak on environmental pollution in the QUAD nations. Design/methodology/approach To calibrate the social movement of public, six indicators such residential mobility, transit mobility, workplace mobility, grocery and pharmacy mobility, retail and recreation mobility and park mobility have been deliberated. The data of human mobility have been gathered from the Google mobility database. To achieve the relevant objectives, current pragmatic analysis exerts a panel autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL)-based framework using the pooled mean-group (PMG) estimator, proposed by Pesaran and Shin (1999), Pesaran and Smith (1995). Findings The outcome reveals that in the long-run public mobility change significantly impact the pollutants such as PM2.5 and nitrogen dioxide; however, it does not lead to any changes on ozone level. As per as short run outcome is concerned, the consequence unearths country wise heterogeneous impact of different indicators of public mobility on the air pollution. Research limitations/implications The ultimate inferences of the above findings have been made merely on the basis of examination of QUAD economies; however, comprehensive studies can be performed by considering modern economies simultaneously. Additionally, finding could be constraint in terms of data; for instance, Google data used may not suitably signify real public mobility changes. Originality/value A considerable amount of investigation explores the impact of covid-19 on environmental consequences by taking carbon emission as a relevant indicator of environmental pollution. Hence, the present pragmatic investigation attempts to advance the present discernment of the above subject in two inventive ways. Primarily, by investigating other components of environmental pollution such as nitrogen dioxide, PM2.5 and ozone, to reveal the impact of covid-19 outbreak on environmental pollution, as disregarded by the all preceding studies. Additionally, it makes a methodological contribution before integrating supplementary variables accompanying with ecological air pollution. Finally, the current research article provides an alternative and creative approach of modeling the impact of public mobility on environmental sustainability.

Automated summary

This study examines the impact of COVID-19 on environmental pollution, finding that lockdown and social distancing policies have a significant effect on pollutants such as PM2.5 and nitrogen dioxide. In the short term, the impact of different indicators of public mobility on air pollution varies from country to country.