Beyond Income and Education: Unveiling the True Catalysts of Green Behavior in Pakistan and South Asia
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<jats:p>There is extensive literature on the progress of green alternatives in Pakistan, but there is no evaluation of how the people of Pakistan will respond to these proposed solutions. After conducting a literature review on green alternatives, this paper employs the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) framework. It utilizes data from the World Values Survey (WVS) in conjunction with logistic regression to assess the viability of sustainable practices in Pakistan and whether specific demographic groups, such as women, highly educated individuals, and high-income citizens, exhibit a greater inclination to adopt sustainable practices. Our regression analysis indicates that people’s income, religiosity level, and age do not affect their likelihood of adopting sustainable practices. In contrast, their attitude towards free market ideology, self-provision, and cultural values such as power distance and global connectedness have a significant impact. The paper shows Pakistan’s education system does not instill environmental values in people like other South Asian systems. Women in South Asia are less likely to adopt sustainable practices than men. These findings offer valuable insights for policymakers and financial institutions, guiding a nuanced restructuring of green alternative approaches in Pakistan and South Asia. </jats:p>
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Zulfiqar, Fasih (n.d.). Beyond Income and Education: Unveiling the True Catalysts of Green Behavior in Pakistan and South Asia. Consilience(27). 10.52214/consilience.vi27.12172 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/31989.
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Fasih Zulfiqar
I'm an M.A. student in Analytical Political Economy (GPA: 3.95) at Duke, where I am also collaborating with Professor Timur Kuran, coauthoring several papers and working on a public opinion project. My research explores the political economy of beliefs and institutional traps, combining applied microeconomics theory with empirical political economy to explain why Pareto-inefficient equilibria persist.
My primary research strand formalizes the concept of habitual preference falsification; by fusing rational addiction models with public choice theory, I derive the dynamic stability conditions under which societies become locked into "falsification traps" despite exogenous shocks. I apply similar game-theoretic tools to the study of modern autocracy in my work on sacralized digital authoritarianism, modeling how regimes use information design and "sacred" signaling to solve coordination problems among security agents and crowdsource repression.
Beyond individual strategic behavior, I examine the macro-institutional constraints on development. In collaboration with Timur Kuran, I investigate the modernization of the Muslim world, challenging linear development models by conceptualizing modernization as a sector-specific process that generates uneven institutional outcomes. Across these strands, I employ rigorous identification strategies—from difference-in-differences to regression discontinuity designs—to empirically validate how repression, governance, and social norms jointly warp economic incentives in fragile states.
I was honored to be selected as a Bastiat Fellow by the Mercatus Center and to receive an Emergent Ventures grant from Tyler Cowen for my research agenda. Before Duke, I graduated summa cum laude (B.S. in Econ and Math) as valedictorian for class of 2024 at IBA Karachi. I have applied my analytical training in professional settings across 11 different organizations, either in part-time or full-time roles. For instance, I developed quantitative forecasting models as a Market Research Strategist at Aromasong USA, provided strategic consulting to over 100 entrepreneurs for Alibaba, generating over $370,000 in new trade and sales, and analyzed depositers' retention rate at Self-Help Credit Union, providing actionable suggestions to stabilize our primary funding sources.
Beyond academia and work, I'm passionate about philosophy, particularly Stoicism and Existentialism, and I enjoy powerlifting, watching and playing soccer, dogs, hiking, and trying new cafes.
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