Is religiosity distance a driver of trade in environmental goods?

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the effects of religiosity distance on trade in environmental goods (EGs) using 5,297 pairs of 88 countries during the 1996–2019 period. Religiosity reflects the level of personal trust in God and the values and ideals of his religion. Environmental goods consist of environmental products and services with production, usage, or disposal features that escape from devastating the environment. We use the APEC List of Environmental Goods to define the EGs. We measure religiosity by using a combined index covering three components, including members of a religion, the importance of religion, and religious service attendance. Our empirical results show that countries with religious proximity are more likely to trade EGs. Among three dimensions, only the member of religion and importance of religion play a role while attendance to religion service has no effect on the export of green goods.

KEYWORDS:

• environmental goods
• religiosity distance
• international trade
• culture

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• F14
• F18
• Q56

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ https://unstats.un.org/unsd/trade/classifications/correspondence-tables.asp

² The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Banking Academy of Vietnam, No. NCM-02/2020.