Impact of Internet Use on Ecological Footprint: Panel Data Analysis for Fragile Five Countries (Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Turkiye)

Abstract

In addition to the views that claim that the development of information and communication technologies will result in less environmental pollution and better environmental quality, there are also views that claim that it will increase environmental pollution. In this study, the relationship between environmental quality and information and communication technologies for the 1995–2021 period for the Fragile Five countries was examined using the panel augmented autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds test method. Ecological footprint was used to represent environmental quality, and the proportion of individuals using the internet was used to represent developments in information and communication technologies. In addition, economic growth, energy consumption, and financial development are included in the model as explanatory variables. According to the results of this study, internet use reduces the ecological footprint in both the short and long run. While financial development reduces the ecological footprint in the long run, energy consumption increases both in the short and long run. Economic growth, on the other hand, increases the ecological footprint in the short run. In line with these results, expanding internet use in the Fragile Five Countries may increase environmental quality.