Institute of Economics and Management, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou 450046, China.
Archival Research Centre, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou 450001, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Apr 12;18(8):4045. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18084045.
Pollution-intensive industries (PIIs) have both scale effect and environmental sensitivity. Therefore, this paper studies how environmental regulation (ER) affects the location dynamics of PIIs under the agglomeration effect. Our results show that, ER can increase the production costs of pollution-intensive firms (PIFs) by internalizing the negative impact of pollutant discharge in a region, and thus, directly reduces the region's attractiveness to PIFs. Meanwhile, ER can indirectly reduce the attractiveness of a region to PIFs by reducing the externality of the regional agglomeration effect. Moreover, these influences are regulated by the level of local economic development. Based on the moderated mediating effect model, we find evidence from the site selection activities of newly built chemical firms in cities across China. The empirical test shows that compared with 2014, the proportion of the direct effect of ER to the total effects significantly decreased in 2018, while the proportion of indirect effects under the agglomeration effect increased significantly. Our findings provide reference for the government to design effective environmental policies to guide the location choice of new PIFs.
污染密集型产业（PIIs）具有规模效应和环境敏感性。因此，本文研究了在集聚效应下，环境规制（ER）如何影响 PIIs 的区位动态。研究结果表明，ER 通过将污染物排放对一个地区的负面影响内部化，从而增加了污染密集型企业（PIFs）的生产成本，这直接降低了该地区对 PIFs 的吸引力。同时，ER 通过降低区域集聚效应的外部性，间接地降低了该地区对 PIFs 的吸引力。此外，这些影响受到地方经济发展水平的调节。基于中介效应模型的调节作用，我们从中国各城市新建化工企业的选址活动中找到了证据。实证检验表明，与 2014 年相比，2018 年 ER 对总效应的直接效应比例显著降低，而集聚效应下的间接效应比例显著增加。我们的研究结果为政府设计有效的环境政策以引导新的 PIFs 的选址选择提供了参考。
