ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Economics and Management
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1612977
Tourism, Remittances, and Natural Resources as Drivers of CO₂ Emissions: The Role of Fintech in Environmental Sustainability in Emerging Economies
Provisionally accepted
- Tianjin University of Commerce, Tianjin, China
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Tourism plays a pivotal role in driving economic growth across E-7 economies (Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, and Turkey.) but often exacerbates environmental degradation through increased carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. In parallel, the rise of financial technologies (fintech) offers innovative pathways to reduce ecological footprints and support green transitions. This study empirically investigates the impact of tourism (TR), natural resource rents (NR), remittances (RM), and fintech development on CO₂ emissions in E7 nations over the period 2000-2022. Employing a robust panel econometric framework that includes Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS), Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS), Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR), and Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality tests, we find compelling evidence that tourism, remittances, and resource dependency significantly elevate emissions. Specifically, a 1% increase in tourism is associated with a 0.13-0.15% rise in emissions, while natural resource rents contribute up to 0.16%. Conversely, fintech exhibits a significant negative effect, with a 1% increase in fintech activity reducing CO₂ emissions by 0.15% (FMOLS) and up to 0.19% across upper quantiles in the MMQR analysis. Remittances also show a consistent positive relationship with emissions, highlighting the dual-edged impact of financial inflows. Causality analysis confirms fintech's unidirectional influence on emissions, underscoring its potential in environmental governance. These findings advocate for the integration of fintech-enabled solutions-such as AI-powered carbon tracking, blockchain-based carbon credit systems, and digital green finance tools-into national tourism and climate policies. Strengthening the role of fintech in sustainable tourism frameworks can help E7 nations achieve low-carbon growth while enhancing economic resilience.
Keywords: carbon emissions, FinTech, tourism, Natural resources, remittances, E7 economies, quantile regression
Received: 16 Apr 2025; Accepted: 17 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Bo Yang, Tianjin University of Commerce, Tianjin, China
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