A nexus between the rule of law, green innovation, growth and sustainable environment in top Asian countries: fresh insights from heterogeneous panel estimation

Abstract The intricacies revolving around Environmental Governance is the prime issue of this century. For this, researchers and practitioners have always strived for viable solutions that are not just efficient in terms of their productivity, but are also innovative in nature, so that they have the least possible repercussions to the ecological wellbeing. Therefore, the present study aims to explore the relevancy of the rule of law and green innovation, while also ascertaining the economic growth among the top Asian countries from 1995 to 2018. Moreover, the relevancy of the Environment Kuznets Curve (EKC) is also validated by the help of the advanced and latest estimation techniques; specifically, the Cross-section augmented autoregressive distributed lags test (CS-ARDL). Based on the findings from the CS-ARDL, the rule of law, and the concept of green innovation have been reported to have a negative association with each other. Additionally, the EKC hypothesis is found to be legitimate and relevant as well. Based on the findings, creating awareness has been recommended for establishing the rule of law. Whereas, more assistance and investments have also been recommended in order to achieve a higher level of Research and Development, which can then enhance the level of green innovation.


Introduction
It does not come as a surprise that the climate of the earth is rapidly changing. This is essentially fast becoming a matter of serious concern for human beings, particularly in terms of meeting and fulfilling their indispensable, and basic needs and requirements, including water accessibility, production of food, land usage, environment, and human health (Bibi et al., 2021;Danish & Wang, 2019;Wang, Su, Hua, et al., 2021). Researchers, in this regard, have also urged that if the attention and consideration to this problem are defectively and inadequately given, then this problem can single-handedly lead to various other volatilities, risks, and destructions, which can be far more severe and destructive in terms of its magnitude, scale, and enormity (Guo et al., 2021;Umar, Ji, Mirza & Naqvi, 2021). Thus, in order to counter the destruction caused by climate change, the primary and crucial solution is pollution prevention, which is only probable by controlling and curtailing the emissions of greenhouse gases (Hao et al., 2021;Ji, Zhang, et al., 2021;. It should also be noted that the increase in the pollution and greenhouse gases is also because of the increased demand of products and services across the globe. Although this increased demand tends to improve the economic growth (GDP) of any economy, either due to regular increased population or improved lifestyle, the downsides that come with it must be addressed Umar, Ji, Kirikkaleli, Shahbaz, et al., 2020). However, at the same time, such growth or demand also increases the demand of the factors of production and influences the consumption of energies as well . This then tends to enhance the level of pollution and greenhouse emissions in general, and carbon emissions (CE) in particular (Song et al., 2020;Wang, Su, Lobonţ, et al., 2021). Moreover, the whole process of production and consumption is a source of pollution as well. During the production process, the consumption of resources and energy leads to increased CE and post-consumption; the mishandling of which, which mainly comprises of toxic waste, also impairs the ecology. Thus there is a need for the incorporation of sustainable business philosophies Ielasi et al., 2018;Kaiser & Welters, 2019), including sustainable production, which govern the production stage, and propagate responsible consumption, which governs the consumption phase, and the "Extended Producers' Responsibility", which oversees the post-consumption (Najmi et al., 2021).
It is true that multiple arrangements have been made in order to govern and protect the ecological wellbeing of the environment and climate (Guo et al., 2022;Yan et al., 2021). One such initiative is the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. However, among them the most important, and one of the latest agreements which has been agreed upon, and endorsed by more than 190 countries, is referred to as the "Paris Agreement". In this particular agreement, all of the signatory countries have agreed to empirically eradicate global warming, by keeping the average rise of the temperature below to the threshold of 2 degree Celsius (Ji, Chen, et al., 2021;Rizvi et al., 2020;Yu et al., 2022). Hence, countries are now taking substantial and legitimate measures, in order to meet the desired threshold and ensure the shared objective of carbon neutrality . Precisely, for meeting the said target, economies are now making decisions and measures at all the relevant levels, including the individual level, organizational level and governmental level as well (Muhammad & Long, 2021). At the individuals' level, environmental sustainability can be ensured through responsible consumption (Najmi et al., 2021). This can primarily be achieved by, for instance, reducing the amount of plastics consumption , and through the efficient disposition of post-consumption waste . in precise terms, in their study  have summarized some of the various factors from the literature, by the help of which the responsible consumption among the consumers can be enhanced. This can also be undertaken by creating awareness, developing moral values and norms, and providing the most recent developments in terms of the available knowledge of the consumers .
At the organizational level, the eradication of CE by improving environmental sustainability can be undertaken through multiple improvements and operations . For instance, by collaborating with the stakeholders at the stage of development of the product (Najmi & Khan, 2017), collaborating with the supply chain partners for a sustainable value chain , transforming processes towards green supply chain operations in general Naqvi et al., 2021), and by greening the suppliers in particular, as they are the main source of the raw material (Najmi et al., 2020), by having a quality infrastructure of reverse logistics (Najmi et al., 2014), and by conducting frequent orientations which comply to the ecology and environment . Among these, the most crucial factor which leads all of these operations is perhaps the level of innovation that an organization needs, in order to achieve environmental excellence Umar et al., 2022).
At the governmental level, the pollution alleviation and reduction in the level of CE can be made by the efficient role of the institutions and law enforcement agencies, including social, governmental, and political institutions etc., (Goel et al., 2013). It should be noted that the role of these institutions should not be merely restricted to the formulation of rules and regulations that document the measures by which environmental protection can be governed (Muhammad & Long, 2021). However, the institutional pressure is extremely important to establish the rule of law, which forces the individuals or the organisations to have compliance with the rules  so that the possible consequences to the environment by the act of the parties are not just directed, but their level of compliance is ensured to establish the rule of law (Arminen & Menegaki, 2019;Welsch, 2004).
Therefore, in accordance with the discussion, it should be noted that controlling CE is inevitable without the support of the governmental agencies that ensure the rule of law to protect and preserve the quality of the environment. Furthermore, CE can also not be controlled by merely relying on the same conventional production operations and technologies that do not fulfil the required productivity criteria. Thus for the said purpose, the level of innovation is essential and the key to success in operations and environmental excellence. In contrast, the establishment of the rule of law is also reported to lead the improvement in environmental sustainability.
Hence, the present study has the objective to explore the relevancy of the rule of law (LAW) and green innovation (GIN) while ascertaining the growth of the economies among the top Asian countries with the help of advanced and latest estimation technique namely "Cross-section augmented autoregressive distributed lags test" (CS-ARDL). Through this, the present study contributes to the literature in various ways. Firstly, through selecting the top Asian countries because these countries account for the majority of the global population, are key players in the global economic output, and at the same time also significantly contribute to emitting the CE. Secondly, through the statistical technique because since these countries reflect different cross-sections, CS-ARDL is considered the advanced, legitimate, and robust technique for handling the panel data sets, especially when the cross-sections are heterogeneous . Hence the application of CS-ARDL is made because of addressing various methodological concerns, including endogeneity, normality and capability of explaining more variances while comparing with the traditional statistical techniques . Thirdly, the present study also intends to evaluate the relevancy of the "Environment Kuznets Curve" (EKC) hypothesis, which reports that growth and pollution have a U-shaped relationship where growth tends to increase pollution. However, after reaching a certain limit, it starts decreasing (Grossman & Krueger, 1991). Lastly and most importantly, the current study is an attempt to validate the use of LAW and GIN as the potential solution to eradicate the CE, which, if found legitimate in terms of empirical evidence then can eventually attract the attention of the policymakers and academicians in further exploring its relevance and appropriateness.
The remainder of the study organisation is next section discusses the relevant literature, methodology followed by the estimated outcome through the application of the statistical techniques and in the last study is concluded, and recommendations are made.

Literature review
Since the ecological quality is regularly getting worse, therefore, academicians and environmental scientists have urged towards the relevancy of Green Innovation as the potential solution for the pollution alleviation and eradication of Carbon Emissions . In this regard, the review of the literature leads to the summarization of the studies into two categories. The first group reflects the study area in which researchers have urged to opt for Green Innovation, as they are reported to be staunch advocates of Green Innovation initiatives, in order to successfully decrease the level of Carbon Emissions, and also suggest thorough guidelines, which Green Innovation initiative can be used productively and efficiently for this purpose (Batool et al., 2019;Danish, 2019;Haseeb et al., 2019). The second group represents those researchers who discard the deployment of Green Innovation initiatives, as they do not consider it to be a potentially viable solution for improving the environment quality, and empirically reported the absence of its role in minimizing the Carbon Emissions level. In fact, they consider it as an operation or activity which would further deteriorate the environment (Chien et al., 2021;Lee & Brahmasrene, 2013;Park et al., 2018;Razzaq et al., 2021aRazzaq et al., , 2021bSalahuddin et al., 2016). Similarly, Fethi and Rahuma (2019), Mensah (2019) and  are also of the opinion that Green innovation has the capability of reducing the level of Carbon Emissions significantly. These findings were also reported in the other geographical settings such as ASEAN (Salman et al., 2019), for high income countries , BRICS (Khattak et al., 2020) and also among the top polluted countries (Zhao et al., 2022). Since the contrasting evidence is always a relevant point to kick start an investigation, therefore, the current research has an objective to explore the said phenomena in the context of the top Asian countries.
The Rule of Law (LAW) refers to the perceived level of law abidance by the society, and their respective individuals, precisely with respect to the enforcement of regulation, rules, and their compliance (Greenidge et al., 2016). It is also considered as the key element of the institution, primarily due to its jurisdictions of law enforcement. In contrast, it is assumed that when a society has a high level of LAW, there is the highest probability of experiencing more compliance and abidance to the ecology and environment rules (Muhammad & Long, 2021). For instance, for the government to enforce the environmental wellbeing, there is a need to establish the rule of law, through which the environment can be safeguarded by multiple potential solutions, such as through awareness of sustainable consumption (Mohammed et al., 2022) and encouraging consumption of renewable sources (Mahmood et al., 20201). A limited number of studies directly discuss and analyze the level of association between LAW and Carbon Emissions. Some of the empirical findings include those of (Salman et al., 2019), who reported a negative relationship between LAW and Carbon Emissions, which essentially means that a higher level of LAW helps eliminate the level of Carbon Emissions. Similar findings were also reported by (Muhammad & Long, 2021) in the context of 65 countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. In contrast, the findings of (Abid, 2016) reported and concluded the stimulating role of LAW with Carbon Emissions. Therefore, the current research also aims to expand the literature by exploring the said phenomena in the context of top Asian countries.

Data
The selection of an appropriate proxy from the reliable database in accordance with the objective of the research is extremely crucial. Therefore, as per the objective, the proxy of the rule of law (LAW) from the governance index was selected, GDP was selected to represent the growth, the number of patents registered for green was selected as the proxy for green innovation (GIN), and lastly, the level of carbon emissions (CE) was selected as the proxy of environment sustainability 1995-2018. In addition to this, as the study is based on the top Asian countries, therefore, the selected countries are mentioned in Table 5. All of the data comprised of time range of from 1995 to 2018 whereas, the data for LAW and GDP were extracted from the database of (World Bank, 2021), and GIN and CO2 were extracted from the database of OECD (2021). Additionally, for uniformity among the results, the natural log of the variables were taken.

Slope coefficients homogeneity and cross-section independence test
In contrast with the traditional techniques of econometrics and their respective methodologies, the current study firstly assesses the level of "Slope Coefficients Homogeneity" (SCH) followed by "Cross-Section Independence" (CSI) because if these concerns are not addressed at the earlier stage, then there will be a presence of inconsistency and the outcome will have biases. Therefore, for assessing SCH, the technique proposed by (Baltagi & Hashem Pesaran, 2007) was utilised as the assumption of coefficient's homogeneity is considered an essential pre-requisite while having a possibility of its presence or absence. On the other hand, for assessment of CSI, technique by (Pesaran, 2004) was utilised because of having shocks that are local as well as global like the financial crises faced by Asia in 1997 and the financial crises witnessed by the countries worldwide in . The typical elaboration of SCH in mathematical form is represented as equations 1 and 2. (2) Referring equation 1 and 2, D $ SCH represents the level of change in SCH and D $ ASCH represents the level of change in Adjusted SCH.

Tests for unit root
In contrast to the test assessing stationarity that belongs to the first generation, for instance, (Im et al., 2003) and (Levin et al., 2002), the current study utilised the technique proposed by (Baltagi & Hashem Pesaran, 2007), which is referred to as "crosssection augment IMPS" (CSIMPS) test. This technique is considered consistent and vigorous against the coefficients of slope that are heterogeneous in nature and CSI. Precisely, this technique ascertains CSI by making an addition of lags and taking the difference at the first level by averaged and augmented cross-sections. The typical elaboration of CSIMPS in mathematical form is represented as equation 3.
Referring to equation 3, the averages at first differences and lagged are represented as DY tÀ1 and Y tÀ1 : The test statistic for CSIMPS is represented as: Referring to equation 4, "cross-sectional augmented Dickey-Fuller," is represented by CADF, which is further utilised with equation 3. The statements of the hypothesis have been elaborated as non-stationarity is the reflection of acceptance of the null hypothesis. In contrast, the existence of stationarity is the reflection of acceptance of an alternate hypothesis.

Test for panel cointegration
The cointegration relationships among the studied variables, the rule of law, green innovation, growth, and carbon emissions in a longer period of time, were assessed by the utilisation of technique by (Westerlund, 2007), which is founded on an error correction framework. The said is superior and rigorous while comparing it with the technique of assessing cointegration by  and is extremely helpful in employing error irrespective of their CSI and SCH. The typical elaboration of this test in mathematical form is represented as equations 5 to 8.
Ta i a i ð1Þ (6) Referring to equation 5 and 6, they are for estimating the mean statistics for the group like G t and G a , whereas on the other hand, equations 7 and 8 are for estimating the mean statistics for the panel like P t and P a : The hypothesis statement for this test states that the null hypothesis means there is no existence of the cointegration, whereas the alternate hypothesis states the presence of cointegration.

Cross-section augmented autoregressive distributed lags test
In order to assess the relationship for both longer and shorter periods of time, the current study utilises the "Cross-section augmented autoregressive distributed lags test" (CS-ARDL), which is a quite recent technique proposed by (Chudik et al., 2016). This test is considered rigorous, robust, and efficient while comparing it with the other techniques that are based on "common correlated effect mean group," "augmented mean group," "pooled mean group," and "mean group" (Danish, 2019;Li et al., 2020). In addition to this, the CS-ARDL is not just capable of addressing CSI and SCH but is also efficient against other issues, including non-stationary (mixed order of integration too), endogeneity, and other un-observed variances or common factors which can be statistically significant as ignoring them will lead to the computation of biased and ambiguous outcome . The typical elaboration of CS-ARDL in mathematical form is represented as equation 9.
Referring equation 9, Z t ¼ DCE it , W 0 t 0 and W it ¼ LAW it , GIN it , GDP it ð Þ 0 , whereas the predictor variables are represented as W, which are Rule of Law, Green Innovation, and Growth. To evaluate the quality, whether the test is robust and rigorous or not is ensured by the help of the "augmented mean group test" suggested by (Eberhardt, 2012). This test is far superior to the other techniques like "pooled mean group" and "mean group" in the presence of the methodological issues discussed and mentioned earlier. In addition to this, for assessing the direction of causality, the test proposed by (Dumitrescu & Hurlin, 2012) is utilised, which is helpful to be applied when the value of T exceeds N or T is below N. In addition to this, this technique is also recommended when the dataset is balanced. There is heterogeneity in the panel dataset, whereas it can also efficiently handle the level of CSI. The typical elaboration of this technique in mathematical form is represented as equation 10.
Referring to equation 10, j represents the length of lag whereas b j j ð Þ is for the computation of autoregressive parameters. As per the hypothesis statements of this test, when there is an absence of causality, it means accepting the null hypothesis, whereas when there is a presence of causality, it represents the rejection of null and acceptance of an alternative hypothesis.

Estimations and results
First and foremost, the assessment of CSI was done because of its propensity to lead to inferior and problematic outcomes if not ascertained rightfully. As already discussed, the statement of null and alternate hypothesis reflects the absence and existence of "cross-section dependence" (CD) (Pesaran, 2015). In contrast, the assessment of CD should be made variable wise as done in the current study. Although the significance level could be 10%, 5%, or 1%, which is normally accepted in the related studies, the outcome mentioned in Table 1 reported the existence of CD at a 1% level of significance for all of the studied variables.
In the next step, the level of stationarity was assessed, which is also essential to be gauged, whereas failure to ascertain could have inferior and problematic outcomes. Moreover, the stationarity was assessed with the help of two tests which are far superior to other conventional tests, namely the test by (Pesaran, 2007) and (Bai & Carrion-I-Silvestre, 2009). Based on the hypothesis statements, the outcome generated through the application of these two tests confirms the presence of stationarity. It discards the likelihood of having unit root issues in accordance with their computation framework. Precisely, the outcome reported by the test of (Pesaran, 2007) confirms that to ascertain the structural breaks, all of the studied variables are stationary at a 1% level of significance. On the other hand, the outcome generated through the application of the test by (Bai & Carrion-I-Silvestre, 2009) also supported the findings of (Pesaran, 2007) and reported that the data is supposed to have unit root issues at the level. In contrast, it becomes stationary when their first difference is considered. The outcome generated from both tests confirming the stationarity of the data set variables wise is depicted in Table 2.
After ascertaining the level of CD and ruling out the propensity of having the unit root problems, in the later stage, the level of SCH was assessed in the data set through the revised version of (Swamy, 1970), which was done and discussed by (Pesaran & Yamagata, 2008) and is accordingly recommended for generating the rigorous and robust outcome (Alam et al., 2018). The hypothesis statements of this test state the presence and absence of SCH with the acceptance of null hypothesis and rejection of null hypothesis, respectively. The results generated through the application of (Pesaran & Yamagata, 2008) reported the absence of SCH. They concluded that the slope is heterogeneous, which is statistically significant, and the outcome is reported significant at a 1% level of significance (Table 3).
In the next stage, the level of cointegration was assessed with the help of (Westerlund & Edgerton, 2008). As discussed, this test has the hypothesis which is if it is found to have significance, then it means the cointegration is present. In contrast, if it is found to be insignificant, then it means the cointegration is absent. The outcome generated through (Westerlund & Edgerton, 2008) acknowledges the cointegration as the outcome reported is statistically significant at a 1% significance level. The outcome generated through (Westerlund & Edgerton, 2008) is mentioned in Table 4.  In addition to this, the level of cointegration is also assessed by applying the test discussed by (Banerjee & Carrion-i-Silvestre, 2017). This test is different from the test of (Westerlund & Edgerton, 2008) in terms of generating in-depth outcomes from this test. Precisely, the earlier reported test only ascertains the level of cointegration for the whole data set. In contrast, this test can ascertain the level of cointegration for every single sub-section, which in the present study is every single Asian Country. Despite the difference with respect to the depth of the ascertaining the cointegration, the current test also reported that the data set as a whole and countries as a separate section, all are reported to possess the cointegration as the outcome values for all of them are statistically significant at 1% level of significance. The outcome generated through the (Banerjee & Carrion-i-Silvestre, 2017) is mentioned in Table 5.
Once all of the required and suggested quality parameters were met, finally, the application of CS-ARDL was made. The outcome of CS-ARDL is generated for both longer and shorter periods of time. Firstly, while discussing the outcome in a longer period of time, the LAW was reported to have a negative and significant association with CE b ¼ À0:346, p < 0:01 ð Þ at 1% level of significance. This statistical interpretation of the outcome means that a 1% increase in LAW will improve the sustainability of the environment as it will decrease the level of CE by 34.6%. This relationship signifies the importance of the rule of law for the regular extermination of CE. Furthermore, it also highlights the importance of having the rule of law or compliance, which means that in addition to making the environment-oriented and preservation focused legislation which normally every government or law-making institutions do for the wellbeing of the environment, however, they also need to have  an implementation of those rules at just, as the results revealed that there is not just need to have rules. However, there is also a need to have assurance on the level of compliance that is being made for enabling the rule of law. These findings also support the existing but limited literature covering and reporting similar relationships in the context of countries forming the BRICS region (Danish & Wang, 2019) and 65 countries participating in the belt and road initiative (Muhammad & Long, 2021). Secondly, while discussing the outcome in a longer period of time, the GIN was also reported to have a negative and significant association with CE b ¼ À0:218, p < 0:01 ð Þ at 1% level of significance. This statistical interpretation of the outcome means that a 1% increase in GIN will improve the sustainability of the environment as it will decrease the level of CE by 21.8%. This outcome highlights the importance of GIN for the regular extermination of CE. Furthermore, it highlights that with the help of investing in GIN, economies can exterminate the level of CE and urge the utilisation of the GIN as one of the potential solutions for the betterment and wellbeing of the environment. These findings also support the existing literature covering and reporting similar relationships, including Alvarez-Herr anz et al., 2017;Balsalobre-Lorente et al., 2018;Guo et al., 2021;Khan et al., 2020).
Lastly, for assessing the relevancy of the EKC curve for which the GDP and its square were included in the analysis. The outcome reported having a positive and significant association of GDP with CE b ¼ 0:354, p < 0:05 ð Þat 5% level of significance. This statistical interpretation of the outcome means that a 1% increase in GDP will impair the sustainability of the environment as it will increase the level of CE by 35.4%. On the other hand, for the square of GDP, the outcome reported having a negative and significant association with CE b ¼ À0:193, p < 0:01 ð Þ at 1% level of significance. This statistical interpretation of the outcome means that a 1% increase in the square of GDP will improve the sustainability of the environment as it will decrease the level of CE by 21.8%. These two relationships form a U-shaped association between GDP and CE as GDP will increase the CE to a point where it starts to diminish and eventually reports a negative association. This justifies the relevancy and legitimacy of the EKC curve in the context of top Asian Countries. These results findings also support the existing literature that covers and reported the similar relationships and legitimacy ok EKC, including (Esso & Keho, 2016;Hanif, 2018;Hanif & Gago-de-Santos, 2017;Kais & Sami, 2016;Saidi & Hammami, 2015;Saleem et al., 2020;Wang et al., 2016). The outcome generated through the CS-ARDL for the long run is mentioned in Table 6.
The outcome generated through CS-ARDL for the shorter period of time reported similar findings as reported in the longer period of time for all of the studied relationships except for LAW and CE. Unlike the long-run association, the outcome of the relationship of LAW is reported to have a positive and significant association with CE b ¼ 0:050, p < 0:01 ð Þ at 1% level of significance. This statistical interpretation of the outcome means that a 1% increase in LAW will impair the sustainability of the environment as it will increase the level of CE by 5%. The magnitude of the path coefficient in the shorter period of time indicates that since compliance towards the rule of law is impossible despite the efforts put by the law enforcement agencies, the non-compliance leads to impair the environment quality further. This relationship was found negative in the longer period of time, but due to the variation in the time period and the perceived or expected outcome for LAW is not possible, and having high compliance towards LAW requires time. The outcome generated through the CS-ARDL for the short run is mentioned in Table 7.
In the last stage, the robustness and rigorousness of the generated output through CS-ARDL was confirmed by the application of Augmented Mean Group" (AMG) and "Common Correlated Effect Mean Group" (CCEMG). The outcome generated through both of these tests validates the findings of CS-ARDL by generating similar results for all of the studied associations of the current study. For instance, LAW and GIN were reported to have a negative association. In contrast, the EKC hypothesis was found to be legitimate and relevant through the application of CS-ARDL and outcome generated through Augmented Mean Group" (AMG) and "Common Correlated Effect Mean Group" (CCEMG) have reported identical results. The outcome generated through the AMG and CCEMG is mentioned in Table 8.

Conclusion and recommendations
The climate of the earth is rapidly changing, and researchers urged that if the attention and consideration to this problem are defectively and inadequately given, then   this problem can single-handedly lead to various other volatilities, risks, and destructions. For countering the destruction caused by climate change, the essential solution is pollution prevention which is possible by controlling the emissions of greenhouse gases. It should also be noted that the increase in pollution and greenhouse gases is also because of the increased demand for products across the globe, which also leads to an increase in the level of GDP. Hence, a balance of equilibrium needs to be achieved as controlling the production will worsen the economy, and improved production will impair the environment. This equilibrium can be achieved by having a sufficiency of GIN and improving compliance to establish the LAW.
Therefore, the present study aims to explore the LAW and GIN's relevancy while ascertaining the economies' growth among the top Asian countries. Through the application of CS-ARDL, LAW and GIN were reported to have a negative association, whereas the EKC hypothesis was legitimate and relevant. Although the EKC is found relevant empirically, its relevancy needs to be supported by the proposed recommendation, following which the EKC can be made relevant practically. For that, GIN can play an efficient role. In order to improve the level of GIN, there is a need to have more investments in Research and Development by which more GIN can be made. Moreover, GIN will also be needed in transforming the existing operations towards sustainable and environment-friendly operations. For instance, to have clean input, there is a need to have GIN which makes it useful for clean energy to be used as input resources. Similarly, GIN will need GIN to develop vehicles that consume less energy and produce greater mileage to have an environment-friendly transport infrastructure. Moreover, adequate channelising of the investments will be needed for an improved level of GIN which can also be possible by attracting collaboration among the private and public stakeholders.
On the other hand, EKC can also be made relevant practically by establishing the LAW and improving the governance infrastructure. For said purpose, government institutions should not just be making regulations and rules for pollution alleviation. However, they also need to improve the level of compliance. Such compliance can be made by creating proper awareness among the individuals and organisations that comply with the proposed regulations. In addition to this, creating the habits and norms of following certain initiatives similar to other cultural norms like the Japanese culture of lean and 5S could also play the role. Lastly, the government needs to introduce a proper governance system in which non-compliance to the LAW is strictly monitored, and in the worst scenario, parties are penalised to ensure LAW.
Similar to any other study, there are also certain limitations that this research possesses. Based on these limitations, there are also future directions to the researchers for further expanding the literature. Firstly, there is a need to revisit the same relationships by the techniques which can provide more insights from the data like quantiles based QARDL. Secondly, the same relationships need to be explored in other geographical contexts like European Countries, BRICS, and other income and development-based groups of the economies. Thirdly, LAW has the propensity to modify and transform the strength of the relationship between predictor and criterion; therefore, its exploration as a moderator can also enrich the literature. Lastly, there is a need to explore the determinants of GIN and LAW by which the level of CE is eventually controlled.