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Military spending, financial development, and ecological footprint in a developing country: insights from bootstrap causality and Maki cointegration

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Abstract

Military spending is required for national sovereignty, but it comes at a cost. The ecological consequences of military activities remain insufficiently investigated, especially in developing countries, where military spending is on the rise due to terrorism and civil unrest created by different secessionists’ groups. As such, this study has a maiden attempt to address this gap by exploring the effects of military spending on the ecological footprint (EF) using the bootstrap causality test and the Maki (2012) cointegration test under multiple structural breaks. The findings suggest that military spending increases the EF. Also, while energy consumption and economic growth degrade the environment, financial development enhances environmental wellbeing by reducing the ecological footprint. The causality results suggest a unidirectional causality from military spending to EF, while feedback causality exists between military spending and economic growth. The result of this study affirms the existence of destruction theory and also provides a better understanding of the links behind environmental degradation and is applicable for the design and implementation of environmental policies.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Code availability

Available on reasonable request.

Change history

  • 14 July 2022

    Institution name correction for affiliation 2 and 3.

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Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments that substantially improved this manuscript.

Funding

This research is fully funded by the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The approved funding number is IBR_RF263.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management and Social Sciences, Pan-Atlantic University, Lagos, Nigeria

    Perekunah B. Eregha

  2. Institute of Business Research, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

    Perekunah B. Eregha

  3. Institute of Business Research & CFVG, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam

    Xuan Vinh Vo

  4. University of Lagos, Akoka, Nigeria

    Solomon Prince Nathaniel

Authors
  1. Perekunah B. Eregha
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  2. Xuan Vinh Vo
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  3. Solomon Prince Nathaniel
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Contributions

PBE wrote literature, discussed the results, and supervised the study. XVV wrote literature and provided the relevant policy directions. SPN conceived the idea, wrote the introduction as well as the methodology, and performed data analysis.

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Correspondence to Solomon Prince Nathaniel.

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Appendix

Appendix

Fig. 1
figure 1

Nigeria’s ecological footprint (total) versus biocapacity

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Fig. 2
figure 2

Nigeria’s ecological footprint per capita versus biocapacity per capita

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Table

Table 8 Diagnostic tests
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Eregha, P.B., Vo, X.V. & Nathaniel, S.P. Military spending, financial development, and ecological footprint in a developing country: insights from bootstrap causality and Maki cointegration. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 83945–83955 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-21728-3

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