Religiosity and Carbon Emissions: International Evidence

Informal institutions can exert important effects on individual behavior, corporate decisions and social outcomes. Against the background in which global warming poses the critical menace to the world economy and human survival, this study draws on the role theory and adopts the OLS regression and IVREG model to examine the impact of religiosity (an informal institution) on carbon emissions at the country level. Our findings reveal that religiosity, proxied by the percentage of religious population within a country, is significantly negatively associated with carbon emissions, validating the important role of religious social norms in carbon emissions reduction. Moreover, the Kyoto Protocol attenuates the negative effect of religiosity on carbon emissions. Our study calls on policy makers and stakeholders to attach the importance to the impact of religiosity on environmental protection and the trade-off between economic development and carbon emissions reduction.