Do rural-urban migration and industrial agglomeration mitigate the environmental degradation across China's regional development levels?

Abstract

Abstract This research investigates the heterogeneous dynamic impacts of rural-urban migration and industrial agglomeration on the environmental degradation across regional development levels of Chinese provinces. An aggregated data set of 31 provinces, along with three provincial-scale panels, are used from 2005 through 2018. The long-run parameter estimates are obtained employing dynamic common correlated effects mean group technique (DCCEMGT), while the heterogeneous Granger non-causality Dumitrescu-Hurlin test is employed for causal directions. The core results are as follows. Firstly, a unidirectional positive linkage is revealed from industrial agglomeration and rural-urban migration to energy utilization. These linkages showed heterogeneity across the development levels—the most substantial impacts are discovered in highly developed regions (eastern provinces), while the least substantial are found in low developed regions (western provinces). Secondly, the combined impacts of linear and non-linear parameters of both industrial agglomeration and rural-urban migration confirmed environmental Kuznets curves (EKCs) in models with the tertiary sector. However, in the model with the secondary sector, only EKC based on rural-urban migration is verified. Finally, rural-urban migration mitigated the environmental degradation more substantially in the model with tertiary sector-based industrial agglomeration. It suggests that rural to urban migration contributes less to the environmental emissions through the economy's service sector.