Unveiling the influence of industrial growth, urbanization, transport infrastructure investment on environment and growth sustainability in top five densely populated countries in Asia

The unsustainable urbanization process, weak transportation infrastructure and low industrial structure in densely populated Asian countries (Pakistan, China, Indonesia, India and Bangladesh) have caused direct contamination to the environment and unsustainable growth. Thus, this study scrutinizes the influence of industrial value addition, transportation infrastructure and urbanization on ecological footprint and economic boom in specific densely populated Asian countries. However, due to the cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity issues of panel data, the second-generation AMG, CCEMG and MG procedures are followed for the period from 1985 to 2022. The results show that transportation infrastructure, urbanization and industrial structure strongly induce long-term ecological footprint. However, in the long term, ecological footprint is likely to compress as renewable energy consumption increases. Renewable energy consumption has a weak progressive influence on gross domestic product, while urbanization, transportation infrastructure, industrial structure and ecological footprint have a strong progressive impact on gross domestic product. As the analysis succinctly points out, institutional quality has a strong moderating effect on the mitigation of environmental contamination through renewable energy utilization in the long run. Moreover, institutional quality can effectively reverse the impact of transportation infrastructure, urbanization and industrial value addition on ecological footprint from gradual to negative. Finally, threshold level estimates suggest that the baseline regressors can sufficiently penetrate the level of institutional quality to affect ecological footprint. Based on the empirical analysis of the current study, important policy implications for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in densely populated Asian countries are proposed.