Research on influencing factors of environmental pollution in China: A spatial econometric analysis

Abstract

As the problem of China's environmental pollution is becoming more serious, people have paid more attention to the environmental pollution control. In this paper, we first built a comprehensive environmental pollution index including sulfur dioxide, smoke and dust, wastewater and solid waste emissions to measure the environmental pollution of each province synthetically. The method of space econometrics was then applied to analyze the main influencing factors of environmental pollution. Three conclusions were drawn from the empirical results. First, there is a significant spatial correlation between environmental pollution of different provinces. Second, there exists an inverted N relationship between environmental pollution and the economic development, moreover, most provinces have not arrived the second turning point of the inverted N curve except for several economically developed provinces. Third, both industrial structure and R&D investment have a significant influence on environmental pollution, while the influence of FDI is not significant. All these imply the necessity to establish a regional joint prevention and control mechanism to cope with the increasing environmental pollution.