Wang Ke-Liang, Pang Su-Qin, Zhang Fu-Qin, Miao Zhuang
School of Economics, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, Shandong, 266011, People's Republic of China.
China Western Economic Research Center, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, Sichuan, 611130, People's Republic of China.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2022 May;29(21):31901-31922. doi: 10.1007/s11356-021-18027-8. Epub 2022 Jan 11.
Whether high-speed rail (HSR) can promote the coordination between the economy and environment is a critical issue that needs to be investigated. We used balanced panel data of 281 prefecture-level or above cities in China from 2005 to 2017 to consider the opening of HSR as a quasi-natural experiment. We integrated the difference-in-differences (DID) model, the spatial difference-in-differences (SDID) model, and social network analysis (SNA) to empirically investigate the impact of HSR on urban environmental efficiency (UEE). The results showed that HSR significantly improved UEE by 4.6% annually during the study period, although the effect of HSR on UEE exhibited a time lag and varied dramatically in different cities. An analysis of the mechanism showed that the effect of technological innovation and the structural effect brought by the opening of HSR were the main contributors to the improved UEE. Further analysis showed that HSR service centrality also significantly improved UEE and HSR opening and HSR service centrality both had positive spatial spillover effects on the UEE of neighboring cities. Several policy implications are proposed accordingly to make full use of the advantages of HSR to improve UEE for China.
高铁（HSR）能否促进经济与环境的协调是一个需要研究的关键问题。我们使用了2005年至2017年中国281个地级及以上城市的平衡面板数据，将高铁的开通视为一项准自然实验。我们整合了双重差分（DID）模型、空间双重差分（SDID）模型和社会网络分析（SNA），以实证研究高铁对城市环境效率（UEE）的影响。结果表明，在研究期间，高铁显著提高了城市环境效率，年提高幅度为4.6%，尽管高铁对城市环境效率的影响存在时间滞后，且在不同城市差异显著。机制分析表明，技术创新效应和高铁开通带来的结构效应是城市环境效率提高的主要贡献因素。进一步分析表明，高铁服务中心度也显著提高了城市环境效率，高铁开通和高铁服务中心度对邻近城市的城市环境效率均具有正向空间溢出效应。据此提出了若干政策建议，以充分利用高铁优势提高中国的城市环境效率。
