مجلة البصائر للبحوث في العلوم الاقتصادية والتجارية وعلوم التسيير
Volume 4, Numéro 1, Pages 7-18
2025-06-30

The Role Of Trade Openness, Financial Development And Institutional Quality In The Environmental Performance Of A Developing Country: Evidence From Nigeria

Authors : Ilias Biala Musa . Quadri Ibrahim Azeezat .

Abstract

Nigeria's natural resources have been under increasing strain from deforestation, pollution, resource extraction, and land degradation. These challenges, compounded by climate change, highlight the urgent need to improve the quality of the environment to ensure a sustainable development. Therefore, there is a need to identify factors that influence environmental performance to forestall further strain on the resources. It is against this backdrop that this study examines the impact of economic growth, population growth, trade openness, financial development and governance on environmental performance in Nigeria. Utilizing annual time series data from 1995 to 2022 and employing the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach, the findings revealed that in the short run, economic growth and trade openness had a significant positive impact on environmental performance. Similarly, financial development had a positive but insignificant effect on environmental performance. Institutional quality showed a delayed positive impact, emphasizing the importance of governance improvements in achieving consistent environmental outcomes. Conversely, population growth negatively impacted environmental performance in the short run. In the long run, financial development and institutional quality significantly enhanced environmental performance. However, economic growth exhibited a significant negative effect on environmental performance. These findings suggest that Nigeria should prioritize enhancing financial development and institutional frameworks to promote sustainable environmental outcomes while managing population growth to mitigate its adverse effects on the environment.

Keywords

Environmental performance ; economic growth ; governance ; trade openness ; environmental performance indicator