Energy Use and Corruption Mitigation: Implications for the Environmental Pollution

Abstract

Energy consumption is a main cause of environmental pollution emissions that dampens environmental performance. Furthermore, corruption may influence emissions unswervingly by reducing the stringency of environmental regulations which could increase environmental pollution emissions. Therefore, mitigation of corruption risks is a priority to tackle the problem of energy use that dampen environment. The objective of this study is to examine the impacts of energy use on environmental pollution and whether the corruption mitigation interact the relationship between energy use and environmental pollution. The sample includes thirteen selected Asia countries (Bangladesh, Brunei, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam) from year 1984 to 2017. Panel regression methods are employed to investigate the impacts of energy use, foreign direct investment, economic growth, population and control of corruption risk on carbon dioxide emissions. From the results, all of the models suggest that energy consumption does dampen environmental pollution. However, when energy use interacts with corruption mitigation, harmful effects that energy consumption have on environmental quality are minimised. It is concluded that increase in energy consumption will increase the pollution but this effect could be reduced with a better control on corruption. The implications of this study suggest that anticorruption strategies and effective environmental guidelines could limit the effects of energy use on environmental quality.