Should There Be Industrial Agglomeration in Sustainable Cities?: A Perspective Based on Haze Pollution

Pingping Dai and Yuanyuan Lin
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Pingping Dai: Faculty of Economics and Management, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China
Yuanyuan Lin: Department of International Economics and Trade, Finance and Economics School, Jimei University, Xiamen 361031, China

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 12, 1-22

Abstract: Haze pollution is a problem that cannot be ignored in the process of building sustainable cities, and while shifting industrial enterprises can solve the problem at the root, it is not conducive to the sustainable development of urban economies. This paper discusses the role of industrial agglomeration on urban pollution amelioration (haze pollution) using a sample of 253 prefecture-level cities in China. The highlight of this paper is the study of economic and environmental factors in the development of sustainable cities in the same framework and a series of econometric treatments that greatly increase the accuracy of the empirical evidence. Research intuitively shows that China’s haze pollution is clustered in spatial distribution and is spatially heterogeneous in concentration. With the passage of time, haze pollution has a tendency to move from an H–H concentration area to an L–L concentration area. The regression results show that an increase in the scale of local industrial agglomeration will lead to a decrease in local haze pollution; but an increase in the scale of local industrial agglomeration will lead to an increase in haze pollution in adjacent areas. Industrial agglomeration has significant spatial spillover effects, which are spatially heterogeneous. In addition, spillover effects between regions are greater than those within regions. After replacing the spatial weight matrix and controlling the endogenous problem using the instrumental variable method, the conclusion is still robust.

Keywords: industrial agglomeration; haze pollution; sustainable cities; spatial econometric model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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