The Impact of Economic Growth, Natural Resources, Urbanization and Biocapacity on the Ecological Footprint: The Case of Turkey

Abstract

This study investigated the impact of natural resources, urbanization, biological capacity, and economic growth (EG) on the ecological footprint (EFP) in Turkey between 1970 and 2018. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method was used to investigate the short- and long-term effects. The findings indicate that EG and biological capacity increase the EFP in both the short and long term. In addition to these results, the long-term results show that the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis is valid for Turkey and that urbanization has a negative impact on the EFP. The Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) applied to determine the relationship between the variables reveals that, in the short term, unilateral causalities exist from EG to the EFP, from urbanization to economic growth, and from biological capacity to EG. The long-term causality results show a bidirectional causality relationship between the EFP, urbanization and biological capacity. In light of these findings, important policy recommendations are provided for policymakers in Turkey to achieve sustainable growth and improve environmental quality.