Abstract
Since air pollution is an important factor hindering China’s economic development, China has passed a series of bills to control air pollution. However, we still lack an understanding of the status of environmental efficiency in regard to air pollution, especially PM2.5 (diameter of fine particulate matter less than 2.5 μm) pollution. Using panel data on ten major Chinese city groups from 2004 to 2016, we first estimate the environmental efficiency of PM2.5 by epsilon-based measure (EBM) meta-frontier model. The results show that there are large differences in PM2.5 environmental efficiency between cities and city groups. The cities with the highest environmental efficiency are the most economically developed cities and the city group with the highest environmental efficiency is mainly the eastern city group. Then, we use the meta-frontier Malmquist EBM model to measure the meta-frontier Malmquist total factor productivity index (MMPI) in each city group. The results indicate that, overall, China’s environmental total factor productivity declined by 3.68% and 3.49% when considering or not the influence of outside sources, respectively. Finally, we decompose the MMPI into four indexes, namely, the efficiency change (EC) index, the best practice gap change (BPC) index, the pure technological catch-up (PTCU) index, and the frontier catch-up (FCU) index. We find that the trend of the MMPI is consistent with those of the BPC and PTCU indexes, which indicates that the innovation effect of the BPC and PTCU indexes are the main driving forces for productivity growth. The EC and FCU effect are the main forces hindering productivity growth.
Highlights
China’s air pollution has seriously affected the country’s international image and social development [1]
Especially PM2.5 pollution, threatens the health of people in China
The epsilon-based measure (EBM) model uses a hybrid distance function to estimate the efficiency of environmental technology
Summary
China’s air pollution has seriously affected the country’s international image and social development [1]. Especially PM2.5 pollution (diameter of fine particulate matter less than 2.5 μm), threatens the health of people in China. According to Chen et al [2], in China, statistics show that the total particulate matter pollution has increased by 100 μg/m3 , leading to a reduction in average life expectancy of 3 years. Since 2012, central government policymakers in Beijing have recognized the seriousness of haze pollution and formulated a series of measures to control haze pollution. China has proposed a new Ambient Air Quality Standard (GB3095-2012) and issued a new Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan to reduce heavy pollution weather through five years of hard work.
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