Enhancing Environmental Sustainability in Emerging Economies: Do the Roles of ICT and Institutional Structure Matter?

Environmental sustainability is necessary to reduce the impact of emissions on climate change. Meanwhile, the interplay between people and the planet makes sustainable development difficult at the expense of environmental health. Hence, this study is to empirically examine the role of ICT and institutional structure in enhancing environmental sustainability in emerging economies spanning from 2000 to 2022 within a battery of cross-sectional models. The result found that there exists interconnectedness and integration of the global economy in the context of emerging economies between ICT and environmental sustainability. The result shows that ICT has a positive and significant impact on CO2 emissions. This imply that ICT could stimulate CO2 emissions via mechanisms that increase energy consumption and pollution, reflecting some of the contributions of ICT to people and the planet in emerging economies, particularly ICT gadgets and electricity usage, internet coverage and network accessibility by the alarming population, smart cities and energy consumption via industrialization and urbanization. In addition, the results confirm the presence of nonlinearity in the environmental sustainability model, as indicated by a p-value of 0.000. The study recommends that emerging economies make certain that developments in technology have a beneficial impact on their growth paths by implementing strategies associated with renewable and efficient energy and likewise, adopting models that transform electronics waste into usable gadgets. The study concludes that emerging economies seeking to strike a balance between environmental sustainability and ICT expansion should give maximum attention to recycling gadgets, renewable and efficient energy.