Fintech, and Mineral Resources Deteriorate Climate Sustainability: A Significant Role of Institutional Quality and Social Capital

The study aims to uncover the impact of financial technologies, natural resource rents, and social capital on Climate sustainability in the context of intuitional quality in Asian countries. Over the period from 2019 to 2023, we observe the cross-sectional dependencies in data series. The outcomes of CIPS and CADF models show the presence of mixed-order cointegration among variables. The study employs a second-generation cointegration test to explore the long-run equilibrium connectedness among variables. Significant structural breaks with no, mean, and regime shifts show that national and international shocks in Asian economies influence each other. Furthermore, cup-FM and cup-BC estimators are applied for robustness checks to explore the long-run connectedness. The coefficients of the cup-FM model reveal that institutional quality and social capital improve environmental sustainability. In contrast, Fintech and mineral resource rents destroy the environmental quality in Asian economies in the long run. The coefficients of the cup-BC model support the outcomes of the cup-FM model. The findings have several policy implications.