Naila Abbas

Over the last few decades, the business landscape has undergone significant changes, and new investors have faced severe challenges in achieving their desired goals. The business sector has compelled practitioners to introduce some innovative methods that promote the business’s activities at lower intrinsic costs. Thus, the inclusion of digital transformation in business activities has been proposed as the best solution to avoid the business loss trap. In the era of development, digital transformation has received immense attention from higher authorities to spur information technology in business activities. It behaves in a friendly manner across different regions of the globe in problematic situations such as pandemics, financial crises, and energy shocks. Therefore, for the first time, this study tries to demonstrate the critical role of information technology in new business activities for seven emerging economies from 2005 to 2021. However, this study employs different estimators to evaluate its objectives. The results of the basic model indicate that income, information technology, foreign direct investment, and financial inclusion make significant contributions to business start-ups. The entrepreneurial role remains positive and significantly contributes to new businesses by 0.005%. However, urbanization shows a positive but insignificant role in business activities. Additionally, this study examines the mediating role of information technology on income, entrepreneurship, foreign direct investment, and financial inclusion, revealing a significant impact on business start-ups. Finally, the systematic information technology analysis supports business activities in specified countries. Based on the findings, this study proposes some imperative implications for attracting investors to invest in new business projects.

Over the last few decades, the globe has become an eyewitness to several challenges that must be addressed before the bubble bursts. In this regard, environmental sustainability has become a major concern for policy analysts. Leading authorities encourage economies to collaborate and work together for sustainability. In this respect, this study introduces the core environmental determinants, which include income, urbanization, digitalization, natural resources, new businesses and energy transition (ET). To portray the actual situation of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies over the period of 2005–2023, this research utilizes the most prominent estimators and finds reliable outcomes. For instance, income, urbanization, natural resources and business activities can all contribute to environmental deterioration. In contrast, ET significantly reduces pollution. A considerable role of digitalization in sustainability is being observed, and it contributes to environmental quality by 0.185%, 0.069% and 0.005%, correspondingly, under the Cross-Sectional Autoregressive Distributive Lag Model (CS-ARDL), augmented mean group (AMG) and common correlated effect mean group (CCE-MG) estimators. The moderate effect of digitalization reduces emission levels through natural resource conservation, business activities and ET, and the mediating results support the sustainability theme across the selected economies. In a comparative analysis of natural resources, the depletion of forest resources contributes to carbon emissions. Similarly, oil and coal rents describe the adverse but insignificant outcomes for the selected panel. The comparative analysis of the outcomes from natural and mineral resources reveals the superior sustainability performance of mineral resources. The cubic form of income validates the N-shaped environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for the APEC economies. As well, the quadratic form of natural resources and digitalization yields reliable outcomes for a sustainable environment. Ultimately, green initiatives under the environmental sustainability theme are crucial for reducing environmental stress by 2050.