What makes environment-related technologies less effective? The role of uncertainty

Abstract

This study examines the effect of environment-related technologies on environmental quality, conditional on the level of uncertainty. We apply two panel quantile regression approaches to panel data on the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) over the period 1990–2015. The empirical results suggest that environment-related technologies and uncertainty both significantly help improve the environmental conditions, although the magnitude of these impacts vary across the level of environmental footprint. Notably, higher uncertainty could negate the beneficial effects of green patents on the environmental footprint, especially in a highly degraded environment. Several preliminary tests, such as cross-sectional dependence, stationarity, cointegration, and nonnormality, provide support for the adoption of panel quantile regression. The significant and heterogeneous relationships between the environmental footprint and its determining factors are also established. This research offers a scientific explanation for the ineffective adoption of environment-related technologies for improving environmental quality in many OECD countries for years and hence has valuable implications for policy makers about leveraging the beneficial impacts of environment-related technologies on the ecosystem.