Abstract
In recent years, air pollution has received serious concerns from researchers, media, and the public sectors, but air pollution from agricultural production activities has not received enough attention. This paper focuses on agricultural air pollution in central China, which is aggravated by the ongoing rural labor migration trend. With a set of panel data released from Hubei and Hunan provinces in China, we adopt the mediating effect model to explore the relationship between rural labor migration and air pollution caused by agricultural activity in China. First, we use the inventory analysis method and principal component analysis method to calculate the comprehensive index of the air pollution of agriculture in 152 counties and districts from Hubei and Hunan provinces, and we empirically test the impact of labor migration on air pollution with a mediating effect model as well as carry out regional heterogeneity analysis on the pollution effect of these two provinces mentioned above. The analysis above indicates that the increase of labor migration has intensified the comprehensive index of air pollution caused by agricultural activity by changing the supply of labor force in the agricultural sector, the budget line of rural residents, and the scale of agricultural production and crop planting structure, but there is a difference in the indirect total effect between the two provinces mentioned above according to our regional heterogeneity analysis. This study is a necessary extension to studies on alleviating and controlling air pollution in China.
Highlights
The current COVID-19 pandemic interrupted many production and industrial activities, but the agriculture industry seems to have suffered less
In order to simplify the steps of regression, the agricultural air pollutants comprehensive index (AAPI) is calculated by synthesizing the air pollutants released by chemical fertilizer (CF), air pollutants emitted via straw burning (ST), and air pollutants released by livestock breeding (LS) using principal component analysis (PCA)
Analysis of the Mediation Variables In Model (2-2) and (2-3) of Hubei Province, we showed that the income intermediary variables and scale mediation variable coefficient of rural labor migration are significant, 0.2241 and 0.1813, and Model (3-2) and (3-3) of Hunan Province present that the coefficients of the income mediation variable and scale mediation variable are 0.0906 and 0.1482
Summary
The current COVID-19 pandemic interrupted many production and industrial activities, but the agriculture industry seems to have suffered less. Air pollution control in rural areas has fallen into a state of considerable stress and crucial difficulty regarding protecting the environment and ecosystem in China, which has a direct influence on the process of China’s sustainable development. There are two sources of air pollution: human activities and natural processes. Agricultural activities include cultivating the soil, producing crops, and raising livestock, most of which will pollute the atmosphere. Air pollution control in rural areas has become a crucial difficulty to the environment protection and sustainable development for China. The continuous large-scale labor migration provides the internal impetus for the sustainable growth of the regional economy, but in Xu’s study, it affects the household land use arrangements [10], afterwards exerting an influence on agricultural air pollution
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