Quantifying the spatial heterogeneity influences of natural and socioeconomic factors and their interactions on air pollution using the geographical detector method: A case study of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China

Abstract

This study takes the Yangtze River Economic Belt as a study area and analyzes the impacts of natural and socioeconomic factors on air pollution based on a dataset of urban air quality monitoring data in 2015 and meteorological and economic statistical data. We first apply the grey relational degree to test for the quantitative relationships between the natural and socioeconomic factors and air pollution. We then employ a novel method, specifically, the geographical detector, from the perspective of spatial stratified heterogeneity to reveal the potential impacts and interaction impacts of the natural and socioeconomic factors on air pollution. The results are as follows. (1) The grey relational degree results reveal that all factors in the topographical and meteorological layer, pollution sources layer, economic development layer, and urbanization layer have high relational degrees, indicating that these factors are closely correlated with air pollution. (2) The factor detector analysis reveals that the PM2.5 factor has the biggest q value, indicating that it is the primary contributor to air pollution, followed by PM10 and elevation. (3) The interaction detector analysis reveals that the interaction of two factors plays a more important role in influencing air pollution than does each factor individually. Moreover, the interactions between pair factors of pollution sources are the strongest. (4) The risk detector analysis reveals that elevation and precipitation are negatively correlated with air pollution, whereas pollution and urbanization factors are positively correlated with air pollution. (5) Finally, two leading impact areas for atmospheric pollution, namely, the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration and the Wuhan metropolitan area are predominantly attributed to the combination of natural and urbanization factors, whereas Yunnan and Guizhou are the least impact areas for atmospheric pollution because of their topographical and meteorological factors.