Abstract
Environmental productivity comprehensively measures economic growth and environmental quality. Environmental innovation is considered to be the key to solving economic and environmental problems. Therefore, discussing the impact of environmental innovation on environmental productivity will reveal its economic and environmental effects. This paper measures environmental productivity by value added per unit of pollution emissions (four types of emissions are used) using panel data of 10 Chinese urban agglomerations from 2003 to 2016 to analyze the spatial correlation of environmental productivity, and constructs a spatial panel data model to empirically test the impact of environmental innovation on environmental productivity. It was found that environmental productivity measured by value added per unit of carbon dioxide emissions (gross domestic product (GDP)/CO2) had a significant positive spatial spillover effect, and measured by value added per unit of sulfur dioxide emissions (GDP/SO2), smoke (dust) emissions (GDP/SDE), and industrial sewage emissions (GDP/IS) had a significant negative spatial spillover effect. Environmental innovation has a significant negative inhibitory effect on environmental productivity measured by GDP/SDE and GDP/IS, but no obvious effect measured by GDP/CO2 and GDP/SO2. Control variables such as economic development level, industrial agglomeration, foreign direct investment, and endowment structure factor also show significant differences in environmental productivity measured by value added per unit of pollution emissions. In addition, there are significant differences in direct effects of explanatory variables on environmental productivity of local regions and indirect effects on neighboring regions. These differences are also related to the types of pollution emissions. Therefore, policymakers should set different policies for different types of pollution and encourage different types of environmental innovation, so as to achieve reduced pollution emissions and improved environmental productivity.
Highlights
Achieving sustainable development has prompted researchers and policymakers to focus on the determinants of emissions, such as those of CO2, SO2, and so on
Based on panel data from 2003 to 2016, this paper disscussed the mechanism of environmental innovation on the environmental productivity of 10 urban agglomerations in China based on the spatial
From the results of spatial Dubin model (SDM) estimation, environmental productivity has a significant spatial spillover effect, but the direction of the impact is related to pollution emissions
Summary
Achieving sustainable development has prompted researchers and policymakers to focus on the determinants of emissions, such as those of CO2 , SO2 , and so on. The government has attached great importance to conserving energy and reducing pollution emission, pointing out in “the 13th Five-Year Plan” of China the target of “greatly improving the efficiency of exploiting energy resources, effectively controlling energy consumption, the total amount of carbon emissions, and greatly reducing major pollution emissions.” Achieving this goal is unlikely to be separated from enacting and enforcing environmental regulations and innovations, and the continuous strengthening of those regulations and innovations constitutes an inevitable trend of China’s economic and social development [3,4]. Existing studies mostly use the overall national or regional research and development (R&D) investment or patent level to represent environmental innovation, which will exaggerate the impact.
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