Rethinking China's environmental target responsibility system: Province-level convergence analysis of pollutant emission intensities in China

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Mitigating emissions of both sulfur dioxide (SO2) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) has become an important task in China. The β-convergence of pollutant emissions means regions with lower pollutant emissions should have higher growth rates in pollutant emissions and then eventually catch up with those with higher. To boost economic growth maximumly under the constraint of a certain amount of pollutant emission reduction, the β-convergence of pollutant emission intensity is an important rule to rely on when allocating pollutant emission control targets at Chinese provincial level. With Chinese province-level panel data for 2000 to 2014, this research uses appropriate spatial panel models to investigate the β-convergence in emission intensities of SO2 and COD. The results show that absolute β-convergence does not exist in either emission intensity of SO2 or emission intensity of COD, whereas conditional β-convergence exists for both pollutants. Positive spatial autocorrelation exists for both emission intensities of SO2 and COD, meaning the pollutant emission intensity of one province is positively related to those of its neighboring provinces. In addition, the conditional β-convergence trend is weaker when spatial autocorrelation of pollutant emission intensities is considered. The non-existence of absolute β-convergence inspires policy makers to improve China's environmental target responsibility system because further analysis shows that provinces with higher pollutant emission intensities were not allocated with higher pollutant emission reduction targets in practice.