The relationship between ecological footprint and economic complexity has important policy implications for environmental sustainability. Furthermore, institutional quality can be an imperative tool to ensure environmental sustainability, and it may also moderate the nexus between economic complexity and ecological footprint. Therefore, this study investigates the linkage between economic complexity, institutional quality, disaggregated energy consumption, and economic growth on environmental degradation in emerging countries from 1984 to 2017. In addition, it also probes the moderating effect of institutional quality in the nexus between economic complexity and footprint. To do so, the study applies an advanced econometric approach, cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lags (CS-ARDL) estimator, for short-run and long-run estimation, that allows heterogeneity in the slope parameters and dependencies across countries. The analytical outcomes demonstrate that economic complexity increases environmental degradation by exacerbating ecological footprint, while a high level of economic complexity mitigates ecological footprint. The findings of the study unfold that institutional quality supports environmental sustainability by reducing the ecological footprint. The outcomes also indicated that institutional quality promotes environmental sustainability by moderating the nexus between economic complexity and ecological degradation. Moreover, renewable energy is found to decrease ecological footprint, whereas non-renewable energy use leads to intensifying the ecological footprint. It was also found that there is an inverted u-shaped association between ecological footprint and economic growth. Based on the results, the study suggests that emerging countries should accelerate economic complexity along with a stronger institutional framework to combat environmental issues without compromising sustainable economic growth.

生态足迹与经济复杂性之间的关系对环境可持续性具有重要的政策含义。此外，机构质量可以是确保环境可持续性的必要工具，也可以缓解经济复杂性和生态足迹之间的联系。因此，本研究调查了1984年至2017年新兴国家的经济复杂性，机构质量，分类的能源消耗和经济增长与环境退化之间的联系。此外，它还探讨了机构质量对经济复杂性之间关系的调节作用和足迹。为此，该研究采用了一种先进的计量经济学方法，即横截面自回归分布滞后（CS-ARDL）估算器，用于短期和长期估算，允许斜率参数的异质性和国家间的依存关系。分析结果表明，经济复杂性通过加剧生态足迹而加剧了环境退化，而高水平的经济复杂性则减轻了生态足迹。研究结果表明，机构质量通过减少生态足迹来支持环境可持续性。结果还表明，体制质量通过缓和经济复杂性和生态退化之间的联系来促进环境的可持续性。而且，发现可再生能源减少了生态足迹，而不可再生能源的使用导致了生态足迹的加剧。还发现，生态足迹与经济增长之间存在倒U型联系。根据结果​​，研究表明，新兴国家应在不损害可持续经济增长的前提下，加快经济复杂性，并建立更强有力的体制框架来应对环境问题。