The significant improvements have been achieved in information and communication technologies. Furthermore, use of information and communication technologies have been spread swiftly in the world with the contribution of globalization. The raising ICT penetration has led many social, economic, and environmental impacts for the countries. In this study, the interaction between ICT indicators and CO2 emissions was analyzed in sample of EU transition countries over the 1996-2018 period through causality analysis with cross-sectional dependency. The causality analysis revealed a unilateral causality from internet usage to CO2 emissions in Croatia, Czech Republic; a unilateral causality from mobile cellular subscriptions to CO2 emissions in panel and in Croatia, Estonia, Romania and Slovak Republic, and a unilateral causality from CO2 emissions to internet usage in Romania. In other words, the ICT had a significant impact on CO2 emissions.
TopIntroduction
The information is accepted as a main production factor in context of the new growth theories and has become a significant determinant of economic growth. The information and communications technologies (ICT) include all the technologies which allow the individuals, firms and institutions to interact in the digital world. Therefore, ICT includes telecommunications, media broadcasts, intelligent building management systems, audiovisual activities, communication systems, and all technologies employed to process network-based control and monitoring functions (EuropeYou Asociación, 2020). All the technologies including computers and communication technologies for data collection, storage and processing, data transcription to the users are called as the information technology (Tonta, 1999). The ICT enables us to easily access to the information anywhere in the world without waste of time through communication instruments and in turn the information may spread quickly in the world. The aforementioned positive externality of the ICT can also make a contribution to human and physical capital and in turn economic growth. The considerable improvements at ICT and the raising role of the ICT in the world increased the development in every part of societies (Gries et al., 2017).
The change in production structure in the world together with the industrialization, energy dependence in production and considerable increases in fossil fuel consumption accompanied the environmental problems (Li et al., 2019). Many countries, especially the developed countries, have given priority to the decreasing the negative environmental effects of the human beings, resource conservation, and green energy. In this context, the ICT has become an important factor for environmental protection and sustainable development towards a low carbon economy as of 2000s (Klimova et al., 2016). The carbon emissions can be reduced by expanding the use of energy-saving or energy-efficient technologies such as ICT (Shahnazi and Shabani, 2019). The development of ICT for remote detection, measurement and observation of the factors polluting the environment can decrease the carbon emissions through raising the environment quality (Asongu et al., 2018: Berkhout and Hertin, 2001). Therefore, e-commerce, e-government, e-shopping, e-banking, virtual learning, and virtual meetings are generally expected to decrease the CO2 emissions (Jorgenson, 2001; Toffel and Horvath, 2004; Schmidt and Kløverpris, 2009).
The ICT industry has a significant role in the productive and low carbon development. The use of smart ICT systems is suggested to develop the environmental monitoring and decrease the environmental pollution and carbon emissions. Furthermore, the ICT has a significant role in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions and modern ICT can be used to transit the high productive and low carbon markets (GeSI, 2008).
Transition from the industrial society to the information society occurred together with the rapid developments in technology and the diffusion of advanced technologies in human life. The information society is a social phenomenon which reflects the use of information in all economic, socio-cultural, political, and technological dimensions of the society (Yeşilorman and Koç, 2014). Therefore, the developments in scientific and technological fields can lead the changes in manufacturing type and environment. This study aims to analyze the causality between ICT indicators and CO2 emissions in EU transition members over the 1996-2018 periodn. The study targets to make a contribution to the relevant literature considering the limited related literature. Furthermore, the study will be the one of the first studies analyzing the interaction between ICT and CO2 emissions in sample of EU transition economies. The next section presents a literature summary, and then data and method are described. Then empirical analysis is conducted and findings are discussed. The study is concluded with Conclusions.