Impact of trade, technology, and tourism on resources depletion across Belt and Road Node countries

Trade, tourism, and technology significantly impact the environment, and maintaining a balance between resource conservation and economic growth has been one of the most difficult challenges in recent years. The curtailing of resource consumption is decisive for halting and reversing natural resource depletion and decarbonization. Therefore, there is a need to identify the factors that drive or reduce resource consumption. This study investigates the role of trade, technology, tourism, and economic growth in reducing/inhibiting resource depletion in selected Belt and Road Node (BRI) countries from 2003 to 2019. After confirming the data's cross-sectional dependency, slope heterogeneity, stationarity, and cointegration among variables, the study applied the “Cross-Sectionally Augmented Autoregressive Distributed Lag” (CS-ARDL) for the panel estimates. The study results suggested that trade, tourism, and economic growth increase the trade-adjusted material footprint (proxy of resource depletion) in the BRI countries, whereas technology upgradation limits resource depletion. Interestingly, technology development reduces the adverse effects of trade on the material footprint. Thus, integrating technology in trade and tourism is imperative to ensure long-term resource sustainability in the BRI region. •New drivers of natural resources depletion (NRD) are explored in Belt and Road Countries.•Trade, tourism and economic growth lead to higher NRD.•Technology innovation reduces the adverse effects of trade on NRD.