Remittance outflow and environmental quality nexus in Saudi Arabia: the role of ICT, environmental innovation, and energy consumption

This research is the maiden attempt to focus on the linkage between remittance outflow and environmental quality in Saudi Arabia, controlling ICT, environmental innovation, and energy consumption. It employs annual data from 1990 to 2020 and applies asymmetric and symmetric analyses based on “nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL)” and “autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL)” approaches. The outcomes of the NARDL approach remain robust and stable. In contrast, the ADRL approach produces unreliable outcomes. The “dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS)” assessment validates the robustness of the NARDL approach. Our analysis reveals a long-run association among variables. Remittance outflow’s overall impact on CO2 emissions is negative, with a negative effect of its negative shocks and an insignificant effect of its positive shocks. ICT’s positive shocks significantly reduce environmental pollution, while its negative shock is still insignificant. When environmental technology advances, pollution decreases and increases when it declines. Energy use contributes to environmental degradation because most of the Kingdom’s energy comes from nonrenewable sources. Our research suggests that policymakers should create policies that minimize remittance outflows, boost the deployment of ICT, increase the proportion of environmental technology in the total technology portfolio, and produce and use more renewable energies to reduce environmental pollution.