IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mes/emfitr/v62y2026i2p348-378.html

Language and Carbon Emissions: A Cross-Country Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Xingqiang Du
  • Qiao Lin
  • Quan Zeng

Abstract

Drawing on the social representation theory, this study investigates how language structure heterogeneity affects national carbon emissions and further examines the moderating role of renewable energy consumption structure in the relationship. Weak future-time-reference (FTR) languages refer to those lacking obligatory grammatical distinctions between present and future tenses. Analyzing data from 1990 to 2018, we reveal that countries with weak-FTR official languages exhibit significantly lower carbon emissions, suggesting that linguistic temporal framing affects future-oriented cognition and consequent environmental decision-making. This linguistic effect diminishes as renewable energy consumption increases. Extensive robustness checks confirm these findings, which remain significant after addressing endogeneity concerns. Notably, international environmental agreements attenuate the carbon-reducing effect of weak-FTR languages.

Suggested Citation

  • Xingqiang Du & Qiao Lin & Quan Zeng, 2026. "Language and Carbon Emissions: A Cross-Country Analysis," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 62(2), pages 348-378, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:mes:emfitr:v:62:y:2026:i:2:p:348-378
    DOI: 10.1080/1540496X.2025.2529392
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1540496X.2025.2529392
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/1540496X.2025.2529392?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:emfitr:v:62:y:2026:i:2:p:348-378. 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/MREE20 .

    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.