Societal pathways to sustainability: unpacking the roles of humanities, sports, and social consciousness in environmental stewardship across nordic economies

Nordic countries are also reputed to be at the world forefront in environmental management, but with increasing urbanization, cultural consumption, and lifestyle emissions, the emerging conflicts between social development and environmental sustainability are becoming noticeable. The paper answers five fundamental research questions: Do urban development, cultural investment in the humanities, social consciousness, the sports economy, and economic expansion affect the pressure of sustainability in the Nordic economies? The sustainability pressure (SP) represents per capita CO2 emissions, measuring sustainability pressure, and the societal and economic drivers representing the humanities (HM), social consciousness (SC), sports economy index (SEI), urban growth (UG), and economic expansion (EE) using 2017Q1- 2023Q4 quarterly panel data. To reflect both the distributional heterogeneity and the robustness of the model, the Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) is utilized in combination with Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS). The findings show that UG, HM, and SC have significant effects on increasing SP, whereby their effects are more prominent at the high emission quantiles. Conversely, SEI minimizes SP at every quantile, as well, indicating a positive contribution of the sports sector to a reduction in emissions. EE does not have any significant effect on SP, and relying on this, it can be stated that environmental pressure is not significantly influenced by short-term economic growth in this case. These results highlight the need to incorporate dimensions of society like culture, trust, lifestyle, and urbanization into policy on sustainability. The paper has added novel evidence concerning the effect of socially rooted factors on the environment in well-developed welfare states and provided practical implications to integrate social investment with climate goals in accordance with SDGs.