Tao Jing, Wang Ying, Zameer Hashim
School of Business, Jinling Institute of Technology, Nanjing, 211169, Jiangsu, China.
College of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 211106, Jiangsu, China.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2023 Apr;30(20):57302-57315. doi: 10.1007/s11356-023-26561-w. Epub 2023 Mar 24.
With rapid urbanization, the economic agglomeration within cities is associated with severe air pollution. Urban spatial structure adjustment has been recognized as an effective strategy for improving air quality. However, the research on how to mitigate air pollution originating from economic agglomeration through urban spatial structure adjustment is unclear. Therefore, based on panel data for municipal cities in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region during 2008-2018, this study empirically tests the transmission mechanisms among economic agglomeration, urban spatial structure, and air pollution. We use the combination of the social network analysis (SNA) and two-stage least squares (2SLS) methods to verify the effect of economic agglomeration on air pollution. Economic agglomeration's indirect effect on air pollution through urban spatial structure is further tested using mediating effect model and cross-section comparisons. When exploiting an exogenous order rank of node city importance for instrument variable (IV), our finding shows that increasing economic agglomeration by 10% increases air pollution by 12%. In addition, in market forces, monocentricity brings about economic agglomeration's pollution effect, while polycentricity leads to agglomeration's environmental benefits improvement. However, a government-led exogenous polycentricity greatly mitigates economic agglomeration's pollution effect, while in cities with monocentricity, agglomeration slightly increases air pollution. Compared with market power, our paper stresses government intervention in promoting urban spatial structure in terms of polycentric development could be more helpful for improving agglomeration's environmental benefits in China's YRD region.
随着快速城市化，城市内部的经济集聚与严重的空气污染相关联。城市空间结构调整已被视为改善空气质量的有效策略。然而，关于如何通过城市空间结构调整减轻经济集聚带来的空气污染的研究尚不明晰。因此，基于2008 - 2018年长江三角洲（YRD）地区市级面板数据，本研究实证检验了经济集聚、城市空间结构和空气污染之间的传导机制。我们运用社会网络分析（SNA）和两阶段最小二乘法（2SLS）相结合的方法来验证经济集聚对空气污染的影响。使用中介效应模型和横截面比较进一步检验经济集聚通过城市空间结构对空气污染的间接影响。当利用节点城市重要性的外生排序作为工具变量（IV）时，我们的研究结果表明，经济集聚增加10%会使空气污染增加12%。此外，在市场力量方面，单中心性带来经济集聚的污染效应，而多中心性则导致集聚的环境效益提升。然而，政府主导的外生多中心性极大地减轻了经济集聚的污染效应，而在单中心城市中，集聚略微增加了空气污染。与市场力量相比，我们的论文强调政府在促进城市空间结构多中心发展方面的干预可能更有助于提升中国长江三角洲地区集聚的环境效益。
