Does Institutional Quality Determine Environmental Sustainability?

ABSTRACT Environmental sustainability increasingly depends on the alignment between development strategies and institutional governance, yet empirical evidence on the role of institutional quality in shaping environmental degradation remains highly contested. While institutions are widely theorised as central to environmental governance, existing studies report mixed and sometimes contradictory findings. This study addresses this ambiguity through a comprehensive meta‐analysis of 792 effect sizes drawn from 134 empirical studies examining the relationship between institutional quality and environmental degradation. Using random‐effects models, multilevel mixed‐effects models, and Bayesian model averaging, the analysis evaluates the average association between institutional quality and environmental degradation while explicitly accounting for heterogeneity, study dependence and publication bias. The results indicate that, on average, stronger institutional quality is associated with lower environmental degradation, though this relationship is highly conditional. Subgroup analyses show that World Governance and Political Risk indices yield more robust negative associations than narrower or compositionally heterogeneous measures and that effects are stronger for ecological footprint than carbon emissions. Meta‐regression identifies infrastructure, technology, globalisation, foreign direct investment and regional context as key moderators. The findings suggest institutional quality functions as a conditioning framework rather than a uniform determinant of environmental outcomes.