The impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on carbon dioxide emissions: Evidence from heterogeneous ICT countries

Climate change remains one of the world’s significant threats today, and thus Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 prioritizes countries to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change by 2030. Recent studies have scrutinized the impact of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) on the environment. However, the majority of these studies assumed that the environmental impact of ICT is homogenous across countries. This study, therefore, investigated the impact of ICT on environmental degradation, considering the difference in ICT quality among countries. Applying a panel dataset of 110 countries between 2000 to 2018 and the instrumental variable generalized method of moments (IV-GMM) technique, the findings revealed that ICTs improve environmental sustainability in countries with high ICT quality while degrading the environment in countries with moderate and low ICT quality. The results of the causality analysis also showed bi-directional causality between ICT and carbon emissions in countries with high and moderate ICT quality, while there is a uni-directional causality running from carbon emissions to ICT in countries with low ICT quality. Policies that enhance ICT usage through low pricing were recommended for moderate and low ICT quality countries to help mitigate environmental degradation.