IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mes/chinec/v59y2026i1p68-85.html

Trade Engagement, Economic Growth, and Institutional Quality on Environmental Degradation for ASEAN-5 Under the Green Belt-Road Initiative

Author

Listed:
  • Di Huang
  • Nanthakumar Loganathan
  • Yogeeswari Subramaniam
  • Mori Kogid

Abstract

The study utilizes empirical analysis to examine how trade engagement with China and factors related to economic growth affect environmental quality for ASEAN-5 countries and establish both short- and long-run relationships with causality directions from 1996 until 2020. The empirical evidence suggests that the environmental degradation in the region has been exacerbated by the integration of economic growth and financial development over time. The negative relationship suggests that engaging in trade with China, FDI, and improving institutional quality levels can improve environmental cleanliness. The study validated the EKC hypothesis during ASEAN-5’s economic growth, but it did not support the Pollution Haven Hypothesis (PHH). The direct impact of carbon emissions is on trade engagement, foreign direct investment, and institutional quality, but it has an indirect impact on GDP and financial development. This study has greatly contributed to the creation of valuable environmental policies in the future to safeguard sustainable environmental concerns in the Green Belt-Road Initiative (BRI).

Suggested Citation

  • Di Huang & Nanthakumar Loganathan & Yogeeswari Subramaniam & Mori Kogid, 2026. "Trade Engagement, Economic Growth, and Institutional Quality on Environmental Degradation for ASEAN-5 Under the Green Belt-Road Initiative," Chinese Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 59(1), pages 68-85, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:mes:chinec:v:59:y:2026:i:1:p:68-85
    DOI: 10.1080/10971475.2025.2518026
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10971475.2025.2518026
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10971475.2025.2518026?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mes:chinec:v:59:y:2026:i:1:p:68-85. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/MCES20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.