The dynamic relationship between industrialization, urbanization, CO₂ emissions, and transportation modes in Korea: empirical evidence from maritime and air transport

This study investigates the causal relationship between logistics efficiency and factors affecting the logistics environment, such as industrialization, urbanization, and CO2 emissions. With the expectation that logistics efficiency will contribute to economic growth and enhance country competitiveness in the near future, it is necessary to confirm the impact of each factor on different transportation modes, such as maritime and air transport. To this end, this study identifies causal relationships between the factors affecting the logistics environment and specific modes of transportation using data from 2010 to 2018. We employed the panel unit root test, panel co-integration test, fully modified OLS (FMOLS), panel dynamic OLS (DOLS), and panel VECM Granger causality tests for the estimations. The results revealed that factors affecting the logistics environment have different effects depending on the modes of transportation. For maritime transportation, long-run bidirectional causal associations were found between port volume, total exports, industrialization, and urbanization. This implies that export promotion and the resulting economic and social environment changes can increase port throughput; this increase can, in turn, develop and improve economic growth and factors affecting the logistics environment. In contrast, for air transport, we detected a long-run, unidirectional causal relationship among these variables and air volume changes with growing exports, urbanization, and industrialization. Thus, this study suggests a theoretical framework for analyzing the causal relationship between the factors affecting the logistics environment and each mode of transportation, providing insights for policymakers to promote logistics efficiency.