Abstract
As the third-largest SO2 emitter in the world, China is facing mounting domestic and external pressure to tackle the increasingly serious SO2 pollution. Figuring out the convergence and persistence of sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions matters much for environmental policymakers in China. This study mainly utilizes the Fourier quantile unit root test to survey the convergence of the SO2 emissions per capita in 74 cities of China during the period of December 2014 to June 2019, by conducting five traditional unit root tests and a quantile root unit test as a comparative analysis. The empirical results indicate that the SO2 emissions per capita in 72 out of 74 cities in China are convergent in the sample period. The results also suggest that the unit root behavior of the SO2 emissions per capita in these cities is asymmetrically persistent at different quantiles. For the cities with the convergent SO2 emissions, the government should consider the asymmetric mean-reverting pattern of SO2 emissions when implementing environmental protection policies at different stages. For Hefei and Nanjing, the local governments need to enact stricter environmental protection policies to control the emission of sulfur dioxide.
Highlights
China has, all at once, achieved tremendous economic growth but has witnessed severe environmental pollution under the heavy industrialization mode characterized by high consumption of resources and energy, which has attracted a great deal of focus at home and abroad
The traditional unit root tests can only provide the convergence over the whole sample; the mean-reverting properties cannot be revealed at particular quantiles of the series
We mainly utilized the Fourier quantile unit root test to survey the convergence of the SO2 emissions per capita in 74 cities of China from December 2014 to June 2019, by conducting five traditional unit root tests and a quantile root unit test as a comparative analysis
Summary
All at once, achieved tremendous economic growth but has witnessed severe environmental pollution under the heavy industrialization mode characterized by high consumption of resources and energy, which has attracted a great deal of focus at home and abroad. China has adopted a series of creative environmental protection measures to control the environmental pollution caused by the heavy industrialization mode, such as the “Action plan for prevention and control of air pollution” released in 2013 and the “Three-year plan on defending the blue sky” announced in 2018. China has stepped into a new energy-saving and material-saving recycling industrial system, which improves the utilization efficiency of resources and reduces the waste emissions in the way of economic output. The total emissions of nitrogen oxides and SO2 have fallen by 28% and 26% since 2013, respectively
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