Consumer confidence and climate action in the BRICS: The role of energy structure and technology to control ecological footprints for sustainable environment

Uncertain financial and economic conditions are obstacles to achieving sustainable consumer confidence due to their influence on saving habits. Currently, the role of consumer confidence in emerging economies' financial systems and environments is undetermined. While investments to improve energy structure and environment-related technologies are increasing, the effect of consumer confidence remains unreported in the literature. Therefore, we investigate the nexus of the environment, energy structure, consumer confidence, and environment-related technologies in this work. Results are estimated using the methods of cross-sectional dependency (CD), “cross-sectionally augmented Im–Pesaran–Shin (CIPS), covariate-augmented Dickey-Fuller (CADF) unit root, co-integration, cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL), augmented mean group (AMG), and common correlated effect mean group (CCEMG)” estimations. Data from, “Brazil, Russian Federation, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS)” economies between 1992 and 2020 are employed for the analysis. The findings reveal that consumer confidence (CC) supports the reduction of ecological footprints. Similarly, energy structure (ES) and environment-related technologies (ERTs) are critical for reducing environmental deterioration in BRICS economies. Thus, the findings have clear policy implications that support policy consistency to build consumer confidence and capitalize on the favorable effects of renewable energy (RE) and ERTs.