Liu Su, Zhang Yunlong, Cai Jinyang
School of Economics, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, 430073, China.
School of Management and Economics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2023 Jan;30(2):3562-3575. doi: 10.1007/s11356-022-22403-3. Epub 2022 Aug 10.
As an environmentally friendly means of transport, the high-speed rail (HSR) is conducive to promoting corporate performance. An innovative approach extends the impact of HSR networks on pollution emissions from the regional level to the micro-enterprise level. Based on the quasi-natural experiment of the opening of HSR, a difference-in-difference model is used to investigate the impact of HSR on enterprise pollution emission levels and its action mechanism by using the matched data from the Chinese Enterprise Pollution Emission Database, the Chinese Industrial Enterprise Database, and the Chinese City Statistical Yearbook from 2000 to 2010. The results show that opening HSR significantly reduces the enterprises' pollution emission level, while reducing the number of polluting enterprises and transportation costs as well as improving the innovation capacity of enterprises are the corresponding action mechanisms. The impact of HSR on the enterprises' pollution emission varies with industry intensity, population size, and regional economic development level. The conclusions not only provide important insights to increase the ecological quality of China's environment through transportation infrastructure upgrades but also bring some guidance to more developing countries to improve their air environment.
作为一种环保的交通方式，高铁有利于提升企业绩效。一种创新方法将高铁网络对污染排放的影响从区域层面扩展到了微观企业层面。基于高铁开通的准自然实验，运用双重差分模型，利用2000年至2010年中国企业污染排放数据库、中国工业企业数据库和中国城市统计年鉴的匹配数据，研究高铁对企业污染排放水平的影响及其作用机制。结果表明，高铁开通显著降低了企业的污染排放水平，而减少污染企业数量、降低运输成本以及提高企业创新能力是相应的作用机制。高铁对企业污染排放的影响因行业强度、人口规模和区域经济发展水平而异。这些结论不仅为通过交通基础设施升级提高中国环境生态质量提供了重要见解，也为更多发展中国家改善其空气环境带来了一些指导。
