The Spatial Effect of China's Haze Pollution and the Impact from Economic Change and Energy Structure

TLDR: Wang et al. as discussed by the authors studied the interaction between the haze pollution of the province and its neighborhoods' pollution in China's 31 provinces, as well as the impacts from energy structure and economy changes.

Abstract: In this article,according to spatial econometrics,we especially focus on studying the interaction between the haze pollution of the province and its neighborhoods' pollution in China's 31 provinces,as well as the impacts from energy structure and economy changes.First,there exists positive global spatial autocorrelation in China's provinces.There also exists a "high-high" "polarization" phenomenon,which emerged in The Beijing Tianjin Hebei region,The Yangtze River Delta region and the middle region which connects the two areas.We account it for industry transfer,which further intensify the economy-pollution spatial linkage among China's provinces.And on this account,the pollution spillover effect is more obvious.Second,the spatial environmental Kuznets Curve econometric model is set up to quantitatively analyze the pollution's spillover effects and its influencing factors,which finds that the change of pollution's level highly associates with energy structure and industrial structure.In addition,the inverse "U" relationship between haze pollution and economic development may not exist at all or not emerge.The level of pollution is rising continuously with the growth of GDP per capital.According to the empirical analysis,we can conclude that it is just short-term for improving haze pollution by transferring industry to neighborhoods to improve environmental quality.Because of the existence of pollution spillover,the strict environmental regulation's region,for instance Beijing,Tianjin,cannot get all the benefits from their regulation.The most effective method is that neighborhoods coordinate their efforts to deal with haze pollution.In the long run,optimizing the energy consumption structure and the industrial structure will play a key role in controlling haze.And reducing the use of inferior coal can solve the problem in a short-term.