Assessing the coordinative and coupling development of China’s green economic growth: role of sports economics

Abstract

The increased concern for green economic growth made many countries shift from simply pursuing economic growth to a green economic growth mode to protect resources and the environment. Against this background, we calculated China’s green GDP and studied the impact of economic growth on environmental quality. For green economic growth, we employed income per capita, its square, information and communication technology, sports industry ecosystem efficiency, and human capital. We applied innovative econometric techniques such as cross-sectional dimensions (CSDs) tests, cross-sectional augmented Dickey-Fuller (CADF), cross-sectional augmented Pesaran and Shin (CIPS) tests, Westerlund co-integration test, generalised method of moments (GMM), and fully modified least squares (FMOLS) estimators. The obtained outcomes showed the inverted U-shaped EKC hypothesis, which validates the green economic growth theme. However, ICT was negatively associated with carbon emissions. Similarly, sports industry eco-system efficiency (SIE) showed an insignificant negative impact on the explained variable. Human capital was inversely associated with carbon emissions. In addition, the moderate role of the SIE significantly reduces carbon emissions. In addition, the D-H panel causality test results showed a significant causal association among the selected variables. Owing to the outcomes, we proposed imperative policy implications for the desired level of green economic growth.