Fintech development, renewable energy consumption, government effectiveness and management of natural resources along the belt and road countries

The management of natural resource is critically important for the sustainable development of economy, and it remained a greatly debatable topic over the past few decades. Although, a lot of discussions has been made on the role of technology for effective utilization of natural resources. However, none of the study in the past has explored the role of financial technology (fintech) to manage natural resources. To address shortcomings of literature, this study intends to estimate the extent to which fintech development, renewable energy consumption, FDI and government effectiveness contribute towards the effective management of natural resources. A panel of 22 selected countries has been adopted in this paper, we employed annual data ranging from 2006 to 2021. Using Panel-Corrected Standard Errors (PCSE) approach empirical results were computed. The findings reveal that fintech development positively influence natural resource management. Renewable energy consumption and FDI also significantly influence the indicator of natural resources management. Keeping in view significance of governance mechanism, this paper also explored role of government effectiveness in managing natural resources. The findings confirmed the positive role of government effectiveness to manage natural resources. In contrast, the role of urbanization was found to be negative, indicating that increasing level of urbanization put huge pressure on the management of natural resources. The study holds promising implications for the development of policies for the management of natural resources.