Impact of High-Speed Rail Construction on the Environmental Sustainability of China’s Three Major Urban Agglomerations

Sining Zhu,Zhou Zhou,Ran Li,Wenxing Li

doi:10.3390/su14052567

Sining Zhu, Zhou Zhou + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su14052567

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Feb 23, 2022
Citations: 5	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Beijing Jiaotong University

Abstract

Under the background of global warming, it is of great significance to explore how to realize environmentally sustainable development. This paper takes China’s three major urban agglomerations as the research objects: Yangtze River Delta, Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei, and Pearl River Delta. Generally, we use carbon emission efficiency to represent the sustainable development of the environment. Then we use the city-level panel data of the three urban agglomerations from 2006 to 2019 to construct the slacks-based measure integrating data envelopment (SBM-DEA) model for calculating each city’s carbon dioxide emission efficiency. Finally, we construct the spatial difference-in-differences (SDID) model to explore the impact of high-speed rail construction on each urban agglomeration’s carbon dioxide emission efficiency and its internal mechanism. The findings are as follows: (1) On the whole, high-speed rail construction improves urban agglomerations’ carbon dioxide emission efficiency. Meanwhile, it has a positive spatial spillover effect on surrounding areas. (2) In terms of urban agglomerations, high-speed rail construction has significantly promoted carbon emission efficiency in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region. However, it has had negative external effects on the surrounding areas. (3) From the perspective of mechanism analysis, the construction of high-speed rail has promoted manufacturing agglomeration in the Pearl River Delta region and, at the same time, has had a negative impact on the local carbon dioxide emission efficiency. This study has strong policy implications for promoting the sustainable development of the three major urban agglomerations.

Highlights

Accepted: 22 February 2022Under the background of global climate and environmental change, the scarcity of environment and natural resources has increased, and economic activity restrictions have been continuously enhanced
The overall high-speed rail construction produced a significant positive spatial spillover effect, which means the high-speed rail construction promoted the efficiency of carbon dioxide emission in its surrounding areas
The parallel trend of carbon dioxide emission efficiency in cities with and without high-speed rail is essential for double differential estimation

Summary

Introduction

Accepted: 22 February 2022Under the background of global climate and environmental change, the scarcity of environment and natural resources has increased, and economic activity restrictions have been continuously enhanced. Environmental problems have become the main challenge restricting sustainable development, especially in developing countries [1]. As the largest developing country, China plays a vital role in promoting the sustainable development of the global environment [2]. In 2010, the transportation sector produced about 23% of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. If we do not take any positive mitigation measures, the carbon dioxide emissions related to transportation may double by 2050 and even triple by 2100 [3]. High-speed rail construction is considered a fundamental approach to promoting the environment’s sustainable development [5]. High-speed rail generates less carbon dioxide emissions than civil aviation, automobile, and other transportation modes [6,7].

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