Environmental sustainability has become a major concern for policymakers as human pressure on natural resources continues to increase. In this context, the ecological footprint is widely used as a comprehensive index of how much human activities rely on the Earth's biological capacity. This study examines the effects of state fragility and political centralization on the ecological footprint in seven Asian countries include Iran, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and Turkey, over the period 2011-2023. State fragility is used as a proxy for institutional capacity and governance stability, while political centralization represents the distribution of political power. Economic growth and trade openness are included as control variables.
The analysis employs panel data techniques and quantile regression to explore the relationship across different levels of ecological pressure. The random-effects results show that political centralization and economic growth have a positive and significant impact on the ecological footprint. In contrast, state fragility and trade openness are associated with lower ecological footprint levels. The quantile regression results further reveal that institutional effects vary across the distribution of ecological footprint. The negative effect of state fragility becomes stronger in higher quantiles, while political centralization maintains a positive and significant effect across all quantiles.
The findings suggest that institutional quality and political power structures play a crusial role in shaping environmental outcomes. Ignoring governance capacity and political arrangements may reduce the effectiveness of environmental policies and limit progress toward sustainable development.