Investigating Relationship between Gross Domestic Product and Ecological Footprint as an Environmental Degradation Index

The ecological footprint is a useful tool that we can use it to inform the public about the pressure on ecology and the environment. Also, by measuring it, policymakers can design and implement the necessary programs to help reduce that pressure. In order to measure the potential impact of future activities and policies of development programs on the environment, it is necessary to study the short and long term relationship between ecological footprint and economic development. The purpose of this study was to investigate short-term and long-term relationship between per capita GDP and per capita ecological footprint in Iran for the period of 1965-2011; to do this the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL) was used. The results show that the increase in per capita GDP has positive impact on per capita ecological footprint both in short-term and long-term. The error correction coefficient that obtained from the estimation of Error Correction Model shows that 73 percent of disequilibrium in per capita ecological footprint adjusted after each period and goes close to its long-term trend.