Technological progress, institutions, and environment: A disaggregated ecological footprint analysis for Gulf Cooperation Council countries

• Explores the disaggregated ecological footprint for GCC nations. • Applies augmented mean group estimator from 2000 to 2022. • Economic growth hinders ecological progress. • Institutional quality does not help to improve ecological quality • ICT is the best policy choose to mitigate ecological footprint for GCC countries. Environmental problems cause global problems and threaten the sustainable future of societies. In this context, this study examines the effects of information and communication technologies (ICT), human capital (HCI), income (GDP), and institutions (INS) on the ecological footprint (ECF) and its sub-components for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The study applies the Augmented Mean Group (AMG) estimator to data from 2000 to 2022. The results indicate that GDP and INS increase ECF and various subcomponents. In contrast, ICT reduces the ecological, carbon, cropland, fishing, and forest footprints. Human capital also contributes to reducing the carbon and cropland footprint.