Assessing the impact of Fintech, industrial value-added, and renewable energy on natural resources under digitalization in emerging Asian BRI economies

As emerging Asian Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) economiesgrow quickly and adopt new digital technologies, managing their natural resources sustainably has become an increasingly challenging task.A comprehensive understanding of the complex, integrated effects of financial technology (Fintech), industrial growth, and clean energy adoption under a regime of accelerating digitalization is critical for evidence-based policymaking. This study investigates the long-run and short-run impacts of Fintech, industrial value-added, renewable energy consumption, trade openness, and economic growth on natural resource rents across 19 emerging Asian BRI economies from 2000 to 2023. Crucially, it incorporates an interactive term (Digitalization × Fintech) to capture their synergistic effects. To address potential cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity inherent in the panel data, the Cross-sectional Autoregressive Distributed Lag (CS-ARDL) model is employed. The long-run results indicate that digitalization, Fintech, REC, trade openness, and the combined Digitalization × Fintech effect all exert a significant negative influence on natural resource extraction, indicating overall improvements in resource efficiency over time. Conversely, industrial value-added and economic growth show a significant positive influence on resource use. The error correction term confirms a rapid adjustment rate of approximately 35% annually toward the long-run equilibrium. The results of this study indicate governing agencies and fiscal policymakers should put forth standard regulations around the adoption of digital technology and Fintech practices, resource-based industrial activity, trade policy, sustainable economic growth, energy, and resource management.

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