Socioeconomic Drivers of PM 2.5 in the Accumulation Phase of Air Pollution Episodes in the Yangtze River Delta of China

Cai-Rong Lou, Hong-Yu Liu, Yu-Feng Li and Yu-Ling Li
Additional contact information
Cai-Rong Lou: Key Laboratory of Virtual Geographic Environment, Nanjing Normal University, Ministry of Education, Nanjing 210023, China
Hong-Yu Liu: Key Laboratory of Virtual Geographic Environment, Nanjing Normal University, Ministry of Education, Nanjing 210023, China
Yu-Feng Li: Key Laboratory of Virtual Geographic Environment, Nanjing Normal University, Ministry of Education, Nanjing 210023, China
Yu-Ling Li: Key Laboratory of Virtual Geographic Environment, Nanjing Normal University, Ministry of Education, Nanjing 210023, China

IJERPH, 2016, vol. 13, issue 10, 1-19

Abstract: Recent studies in PM 2.5 sources show that anthropogenic emissions are the main contributors to haze pollution. Due to their essential roles in establishing policies for improving air quality, socioeconomic drivers of PM 2.5 levels have attracted increasing attention. Unlike previous studies focusing on the annual PM 2.5 concentration ( C year ), this paper focuses on the accumulation phase of PM 2.5 during the pollution episode (PMAE) in the Yangtze River Delta in China. This paper mainly explores the spatial variations of PMAE and its links to the socioeconomic factors using a geographical detector and simple linear regression. The results indicated that PM 2.5 was more likely to accumulate in more developed cities, such as Nanjing and Shanghai. Compared with C year , PMAE was more sensitive to socioeconomic impacts. Among the twelve indicators chosen for this study, population density was an especially critical factor that could affect the accumulation of PM 2.5 dramatically and accounted for the regional difference. A 1% increase in population density could cause a 0.167% rise in the maximal increment and a 0.214% rise in the daily increase rate of PM 2.5 . Additionally, industry, energy consumption, and vehicles were also significantly associated with PM 2.5 accumulation. These conclusions could serve to remediate the severe PM 2.5 pollution in China.

Keywords: PM 2.5; pollution episode; socioeconomic factor; geographical detector; Yangtze River Delta (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/13/10/928/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/13/10/928/ (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:jijerp:v:13:y:2016:i:10:p:928-:d:78709

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

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