Environmental Performance in Countries Worldwide: Determinant Factors and Multivariate Analysis

Sustainability

Isabel Gallego-Álvarez¹  Mª Purificación Vicente-Galindo²  Mª Purificación Galindo-Villardón²  Miguel Rodríguez-Rosa² 

[1] Department of Business Administration, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Edificio FES, University of Salamanca, 37007 Salamanca, Spain;Department of Statistics, Campus Miguel de Unamuno, Alfonso X el Sabio S/N, University of Salamanca, 37007 Salamanca, Spain; E-Mails:

关键词: environmental sustainability;    environmental performance;    countries worldwide;    socioeconomic factors;    institutional factors;    biplot;   

DOI  :  10.3390/su6117807

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

The aim of this study is to analyze the environmental performance of countries and the variables that can influence it. At the same time, we performed a multivariate analysis using the HJ-biplot, an exploratory method that looks for hidden patterns in the data, obtained from the usual singular value decomposition (SVD) of the data matrix, to contextualize the countries grouped by geographical areas and the variables relating to environmental indicators included in the environmental performance index. The sample used comprises 149 countries of different geographic areas. The findings obtained from the empirical analysis emphasize that socioeconomic factors, such as economic wealth and education, as well as institutional factors represented by the style of public administration, in particular control of corruption, are determinant factors of environmental performance in the countries analyzed. In contrast, no effect on environmental performance was found for factors relating to the internal characteristics of a country or political factors.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.