Health oriented spending and its impact on sustainable ecological footprint of ASEAN countries : taking no. of hospitals, budget allocation for health and R&D as drivers

With the increase in the health-related issues among the population, the number of hospitals, and the R&D into the medical science, the budget allocation for health has increased in the ASEAN region. However, in- creased activity related to healthcare also contributed to ecological degradation. The purpose of this research is to find the impact of these medical activities on the ecological footprint in the ASEAN region. For this purpose, the author collected data spanning 27 years from authentic databases for ASEAN region and applied different tests and techniques to analyze it effectively. The results obtained from these tests suggested that the impact of all the independent variables was positive on ecological footprint, that is,they contributed to degradation of the environment. In the last section of the study, these results are discussed vividly and several implications and benefits associated with this study are discussed. Moreover, the limitations, which can be improved by implementing some recommendations, are also discussed in the study.