Impact of New and Old Driving Force Conversion on Air Quality: Empirical Analysis Based on RDD

Abstract

This paper evaluates the impact of the conversion of new and old driving forces of economic growth on air quality. Based on the policy shock of the establishment of the Shandong pilot zone, this paper took the monthly air quality index (AQI) as a measurement indicator and adopted the Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) method. It was found that the conversion of new and old driving forces significantly improved air quality, and this effect was still robust for different bandwidths. The examination of individual pollutants revealed that the improvement in air quality (AQI) came mainly from the reduction in the levels of five pollutants in the air: PM2.5, PM10, SO2, CO, and NO2. Moreover, through the convergence analysis, it was found that the air pollution governance effect of the conversion of new and old driving forces had significant β convergence characteristics. The convergence characteristics were still robust even considering control variables and spatial factors, thus indicating that the conversion of new and old driving forces had a synergistic governance effect on air pollution control.