Abstract
The Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) is one of the significant regions with the strongest economic vitality in China. This study focuses on environmental regulation in the eleven Greater Bay Area cities to explore the relationship between it and economic performance for the period 2000–2016. In doing so, we employ spatial panel models (including the spatial instrumental variable method) to investigate the nonlinear relationship between economic growth and environmental regulation. We confirm the existence of a U-shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental regulation in the Greater Bay Area. In the first half of the inverted U shape, the higher the economic development level, the stronger the environmental regulation strength; however, the latter begins to decrease after the peak point. The doubled-edged sword does not cut both ways. This paper verifies that technology innovation and resource consumption are two important mechanisms. Further, we find that both economic growth and environmental regulation have negative spatial externalities; innovation has a positive impact on the environmental regulation of the local city as well as surrounding cities, while resource consumption is on the contrary. In conclusion, this paper provides policy recommendations to further promote economic growth and environmental technologies, and to enhance energy efficiency in GBA.
Highlights
Chinese economic development is turning from a high-speed stage to a high-quality stage with more emphasis on green development
In model (1), the subscript it stands for city i in year t, respectively. regu refers to the environmental regulation, and lnregu is the logarithm value of regu and the same below; pgdp refers to the economic development, and pgdpsq refers to the square of the pgdp, as pgdpsq = pgdp2 ; vit refer to the error item; other variables are the control and instrumental variable
The economic development interaction among cities is far from a win–win situation, and only the cities with geographical and economical adjacency will have a positive influence on the development of the local city
Summary
Chinese economic development is turning from a high-speed stage to a high-quality stage with more emphasis on green development. The economic development has been stable and high-speed for about 40 years since 1978. CNY with a growth rate as high as 6.1 percent, which means the economic development in China has a good momentum. The quality of the economic development in China is not well, as the GDP per capita in China is far behind that of the developed countries such as U.S and Japan, and the environmental problems induced by the economic development are still serious, especially in China’s developed regions. In 2019, the PM2.5 average concentration in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Region, Yangtze River Delta, and Pearl. River Delta was 50 ug/m3 , ug/m3 , and ug/m3 , respectively, which is much higher than the WHO standard of 10 ug/m3.
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