title: Sociopolitical and economic elements to explain the environmental performance of countries.
abstract: The present research explains environmental performance using an ecological composite index as the dependent variable and focusing on two national dimensions: sociopolitical characteristics and economics. Environmental performance is measured using the Composite Index of Environmental Performance (CIEP) indicator proposed by García-Sánchez et al. (2015). The first model performs a factor analysis to aggregate the variables according to each analyzed dimension. In the second model, the estimation is run using only single variables. Both models are estimated using generalized least square estimation (GLS) using panel data from 152 countries and 6 years. The results show that sociopolitical factors and international trade have a positive effect on environmental performance. When the variables are separately analyzed, democracy and social policy have a positive effect on environmental performance while transport, infrastructure, consumption of goods, and tourism have a negative effect. Further observation is that the trade-off between importing and exporting countries overshadows the pollution caused by production. It was also observed that infrastructure has a negative coefficient for developing countries and positive for developed countries. The best performances are in the democratic and richer countries that are located in Europe, while the worst environmental performance is by the nondemocratic and the poorest countries, which are on the African continent.
authors.affiliation: Federal University of Campina Grande, R. Aprigio Veloso, 882, B. Universitario, Campina Grande, PB, 58.429-900, Brazil. thiagoalmeidapb@hotmail.com.|University of Salamanca, Campus Miguel de Unamuno. Edificio FES, Av. Francisco Tomás y Valiente, s/n, 37007, Salamanca, Spain. thiagoalmeidapb@hotmail.com.
authors.forename: Thiago Alexandre das Neves
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Almeida
authors.affiliation: University of Salamanca, Campus Miguel de Unamuno. Edificio FES, Av. Francisco Tomás y Valiente, s/n, 37007, Salamanca, Spain.
authors.forename: Isabel-María
authors.initials: IM
authors.lastname: García-Sánchez
mesh_terms: D003710:Demography; D019049:Developed Countries; D003906:Developing Countries; D004463:Ecology; D004467:Economics; D004777:Environment; D004787:Environmental Pollution; D005060:Europe; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011157:Population Dynamics; D011203:Poverty; D011640:Public Policy; D012106:Research
keywords: Economic aspects; Environmental performance; Sociopolitical characteristics