Impact of investment in quality language education on green economic growth: case study of 23 Chinese provinces

Abstract The spread of the threat of climate change has forced countries to try to implement the drivers of green economic growth. In this paper, we seek to explore how green growth is affected by quality language education in 23 Chinese provinces from 2010 to 2021. Employing the ARDL (Autoregressive Distributed Lag) approach and Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimator, the findings confirmed that a 1% increase in the quality of language education improves sustainable economic growth in Chinese provinces by 0.69% and 0.01% in the short and long term, respectively. Furthermore, the development of sustainable electricity generation is the increasing factor of green prosperity in Chinese provinces. Moreover, any increase in waste generation will harshly impact the sustainable growth of Chinese provinces by 0.57% and 0.15% in the short and long term, respectively. The volume of green investment positively correlates with sustainable growth in Chinese provinces. As the primary policy implication, it is recommended that the Chinese government expand the education for sustainable development (ESD) program, develop social literacy on participation in sustainable power generation, and improve the SMEs' education for green job creation and sustainable investment.