Yan Na, Sun Youshuai, Lin Shanlang, Wang Jingxian, Wu Tuolei
School of Economics and Management, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China.
Xianda College of Economics and Humanities, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, 200083, China.
Sci Rep. 2023 Dec 21;13(1):22835. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-49853-0.
SO emissions have brought serious hidden danger to human health and environmental quality, thus hindering sustainable economic development. The development of high-speed rail indirectly has an important impact on SO emissions through its economic effects. Controlling SO emissions from the source has increasingly become the focus of many scholars, and it is very important to assess the environmental effects of high-speed rail on SO emissions reduction. We use the panel data of 285 cities in China from 2007 to 2017, and adopt the spatial Difference-in-Differences model to study the impact of the opening of high-speed rail on SO emissions. We also introduce an improved spatial DID model that distinguishes neighboring treatment groups and neighboring control groups to test the spatial spillover effect of high-speed rail on neighboring heterogeneous samples. We find that the opening of high-speed rail significantly reduces the city's SO emissions through the internal accumulation effect of technological innovation and industrial structure optimization and the urban external interaction mechanism of the cross-regional flow of production factors. Moreover, the spatial spillover effect of the opening of high-speed rail on neighboring cities is significantly positive, especially the spatial spillover effect of HSR on SO emissions from neighboring cities without HSR. In addition, heterogeneity analysis shows that the effect varies with the different cities' tiers and income levels. These findings are conducive to accurately assessing the environmental effects of high-speed rail, and provide important policy references for achieving sustainable development and reducing SO emissions.
二氧化硫排放给人类健康和环境质量带来了严重隐患，从而阻碍了经济的可持续发展。高铁的发展通过其经济效应间接对二氧化硫排放产生重要影响。从源头上控制二氧化硫排放日益成为众多学者关注的焦点，评估高铁对减排二氧化硫的环境效应具有重要意义。我们使用2007年至2017年中国285个城市的面板数据，采用空间双重差分模型研究高铁开通对二氧化硫排放的影响。我们还引入了一种改进的空间双重差分模型，区分相邻处理组和相邻对照组，以检验高铁对相邻异质样本的空间溢出效应。我们发现，高铁开通通过技术创新和产业结构优化的内部积累效应以及生产要素跨区域流动的城市外部互动机制，显著降低了城市的二氧化硫排放。此外，高铁开通对相邻城市的空间溢出效应显著为正，尤其是高铁对没有高铁的相邻城市二氧化硫排放的空间溢出效应。此外，异质性分析表明，这种效应因城市层级和收入水平的不同而有所差异。这些研究结果有助于准确评估高铁的环境效应，并为实现可持续发展和减少二氧化硫排放提供重要的政策参考。
