Analysis of commercial air transport impact on environmental degradation: validity of environment Kuznets curve hypothesis for Azerbaijan

Airline industry is one of the sources that release a considerable number of carbon dioxide emissions affecting ecological degradation, while consuming significant fossil fuel and energy. The purpose of this study is dedicated to examine the impact of commercial air transportation on the environment and validate the presence of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) for Azerbaijan, adopting autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) methodology. The national income, energy consumption, and fossil fuel are applied as independent variables, which are considered an indicator for accurate estimation of the selected time series data within the period of 1992Q1 to 2014Q4. Furthermore, the empirical outcomes of the current study indicate the existence of the EKC for Azerbaijan.