Can natural resource rent, technological innovation, renewable energy, and financial development ease China's environmental pollution burden? New evidence from the nonlinear-autoregressive distributive lag model

According to growth theories, natural resource rent and financial development benefit economic growth of China. However, they severely affect the environment. Therefore, there is a need to develop a path to determine the asymmetric impacts of natural resource rent, renewable energy, economic growth, and technological innovation on environmental pollution in China. For this purpose, our work applies the new cutting-edge nonlinear-autoregressive distributed lag model to examine the short- and long-run cointegration asymmetric relationship between environmental pollution and its determinants. Our findings show that the asymmetric pattern of China's natural resource rent, technological innovation, and financial development will reduce environmental pollution eventually. However, economic growth positively impacts environmental pollution. Our findings have significant policy implications and emphasize promoting technological innovation and renewable energy to effectively control environmental pollution.