Internet financial services, environmental technology, and happiness: Implications for sustainable development

Integrating the internet and financial services gives people the luxury to reduce financial stress and anxiety by giving consumers more power over their financial situation. Likewise, the adoption of environmental technologies helps improve environmental quality, which positively impacts mental and physical health and thus increases the sense of well-being and happiness. Therefore, the main focus of the study is to analyze the influence of financial services and environmental technologies on happiness. For analyzing the short and long-run impacts of financial services and environmental technologies on happiness, we have utilized the ARDL model and QARDL models. The findings of the ARDL model confirm the positive influence of financial services, environmental technologies, national income, financial development, and education on happiness in the short and long term. Similarly, the QARDL model also suggests the favorable long-run effects of financial services and environmental technologies on happiness at most quantiles. The long-run Wald test confirms the asymmetric influence of all variables on happiness, while in the short-term, excluding education, all other variables exert asymmetric impacts on happiness. Thus, to promote happiness, policymakers should try to increase the role of internet-based financial services and increases investment in research and development activities to enhance environment-related technologies. However, the study is limited to China, it should be expanded to other regions.