Reexamining the impact of natural resource rent and corruption control on environmental quality: Evidence from carbon emissions and ecological footprint in 152 countries

In order to explore the impact of natural resource rent and corruption control on environmental quality (ecological footprint, carbon emissions), this paper uses the moment quantile regression method within the framework of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. Based on the availability of data, the research object is positioned as the sample data of 152 countries from 2002 to 2018 to obtain more in-depth and comprehensive research conclusions. The empirical results show that: (1) Corruption control has a significant effect on improving the ecological environment in countries and regions with poor environmental quality. The impact of natural resource rent on environmental quality remains inconclusive, when environmental quality is relatively high, natural resource rent tends to promote the increase of carbon emissions, but there is a reduction effect on the ecological footprint. For countries and regions with better environmental quality, there will be an effect of increasing resource consumption and reducing pollutant emissions. (2) Increasing the consumption intensity of energy will lead to the deterioration of environmental quality, and increasing the proportion of renewable resources will increase and weaken this impact, so it is particularly important to improve the energy consumption structure and improve environmental quality. (3) The impact of urbanization on environmental quality dose not form a unified opinion, and the difference in the selection of environmental quality indicators brings variability to the results, which also prompts the adoption of multiple indicators or the establishment of a composite index that covers multiple perspectives of environmental quality to conduct comprehensive and in-depth research on environmental quality.