Associating environmental quality, human capital, financial development and technological innovation in 19 middle-income countries: A disaggregated ecological footprint approach

The influence of human capital accumulation and technological innovation on the environment is one of the most significant topics in the environmental literature. The main goal of this research is to examine the influence of human capital (HC), technological innovation, and financial development (FD) on the ecological footprint (EF) and its subcomponents for 19 middle-income countries from 1980 to 2016. To this end, the study employs the cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) method. Empirical evidence reveals that economic expansion upsurges aggregated the EF, while HC and FD reduce ecological pollution. Technological innovation does not have a statistically significant impact on the EF. The findings of the study imply that the increase in technological progress does not contribute to achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs) for middle-income countries, while HC and FD play an environmentally friendly role. Therefore, to minimize the negative impact of economic development on the environment, policymakers in middle-income countries should encourage FD, allocate resources to promote HC development, and use environmental awareness programs as a tool to achieve the SDGs.