Impact of High-Speed Rail Construction on the Environmental Sustainability of China’s Three Major Urban Agglomerations

Sining Zhu, Zhou Zhou, Ran Li and Wenxing Li
Additional contact information
Sining Zhu: School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China
Zhou Zhou: School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China
Ran Li: School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China
Wenxing Li: School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 5, 1-24

Abstract: Under the background of global warming, it is of great significance to explore how to realize environmentally sustainable development. This paper takes China’s three major urban agglomerations as the research objects: Yangtze River Delta, Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei, and Pearl River Delta. Generally, we use carbon emission efficiency to represent the sustainable development of the environment. Then we use the city-level panel data of the three urban agglomerations from 2006 to 2019 to construct the slacks-based measure integrating data envelopment (SBM-DEA) model for calculating each city’s carbon dioxide emission efficiency. Finally, we construct the spatial difference-in-differences (SDID) model to explore the impact of high-speed rail construction on each urban agglomeration’s carbon dioxide emission efficiency and its internal mechanism. The findings are as follows: (1) On the whole, high-speed rail construction improves urban agglomerations’ carbon dioxide emission efficiency. Meanwhile, it has a positive spatial spillover effect on surrounding areas. (2) In terms of urban agglomerations, high-speed rail construction has significantly promoted carbon emission efficiency in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region. However, it has had negative external effects on the surrounding areas. (3) From the perspective of mechanism analysis, the construction of high-speed rail has promoted manufacturing agglomeration in the Pearl River Delta region and, at the same time, has had a negative impact on the local carbon dioxide emission efficiency. This study has strong policy implications for promoting the sustainable development of the three major urban agglomerations.

Keywords: high-speed rail; three major urban agglomerations; environmental sustainability; SBM-DEA model; SDID model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/5/2567/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/5/2567/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:5:p:2567-:d:756575

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().