The spatial spillover effect and nonlinear relationship analysis between land resource misallocation and environmental pollution: Evidence from China

Abstract

Compared with other countries, China's local governments often adopt the land supply strategy of “low price and sufficient supply” for industrial land and “high price and limited supply” for commercial land in the allocation of land resources. The allocation of land resources is an important means to promote the rapid development of China's economy, and the impacts of land resource misallocation (LRM) on environmental pollution are increasingly apparent. This paper uses panel data from 30 provinces in China from 2009 to 2018 to discuss the relationship between LRM and environmental pollution. The ratio of the average price of commercial land to the average price of industrial land is used to measure the degree of LRM. The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), spatial Durbin model (SDM), threshold model, and mediation effect model are used to study the direct effect, spatial spillover effect, nonlinear relationship, and conduction mechanism of LRM on environmental pollution. The results show that LRM significantly aggravated environmental pollution. This conclusion still holds after robustness tests including the substitution of dependent variables and IV estimates. The LRM aggravates environmental pollution through industrial structure and technological progress. Interestingly, the impact of LRM on environmental pollution also has a significant positive spatial spillover effect in adjacent regions. In addition, there is also evidence that the adverse effect of LRM on environmental pollution is nonlinear at different levels of industrial structure and technological progress. The threshold model shows that with the optimization of the industrial structure, the impact of LRM on environmental pollution shows a weakening trend of “inverted V-shaped”, and with the advancement of technology, the impact of LRM on environmental pollution presents an “S-shaped” changing trend of “strong-weak-strong".