Quantitative Impact Analysis of Climate Change on Residents’ Health Conditions with Improving Eco-Efficiency in China: A Machine Learning Perspective

Xianning Wang, Zhengang Ma and Jingrong Dong
Additional contact information
Xianning Wang: School of Economics and Management, Chongqing Normal University, No. 37, Middle Road of University Town, Shapingba District, Chongqing 401331, China
Zhengang Ma: College of Life Sciences, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing 401331, China
Jingrong Dong: School of Economics and Management, Chongqing Normal University, No. 37, Middle Road of University Town, Shapingba District, Chongqing 401331, China

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 23, 1-23

Abstract: Climate change affects public health, and improving eco-efficiency means reducing the various pollutants that are the result of economic activities. This study provided empirical evidence of the quantitative impact analysis of climate change on the health conditions of residents across China due to improvements that have been made to eco-efficiency. First, the indicators that were collected present adequate graphical trends and regional differences with a priori evidence about their relationships to each other; second, the present study applied Sensitivity Evaluation with Support Vector Machines (SE-SVM) to Chinese provincial panel data, taking the Visits to Hospitals, Outpatients with Emergency Treatment, and Number of Inpatients as proxy variables for the health conditions of the residents in each area and temperature, humidity, precipitation, and sunshine as the climate change variables, simultaneously incorporating the calculated eco-efficiency with six controlling indicators; third, we compared in-sample forecasting to acquire the optimal model in order to conduct elasticity analysis. The results showed that (1) temperature, humidity, precipitation, and sunshine performed well in forecasting the health conditions of the residents and that climate change was a good forecaster for resident health conditions; (2) from the national perspective, climate change had a positive relationship with Visits to Hospitals and Outpatients with Emergency Treatment but a negative relationship with the Number of Inpatients; (3) An increase in regional eco-efficiency of 1% increase the need for Visits to Hospitals and Outpatients with Emergency Treatment by 0.2242% and 0.2688%, respectively, but decreased the Number of Inpatients by 0.6272%; (4) increasing the regional eco-efficiency did not show any positive effects for any individual region because a variety of local activities, resource endowment, and the level of medical technology available in each region played different roles. The main findings of the present study are helpful for decision makers who are trying to optimize policy formulation and implementation measures in the cross-domains of economic, environmental, and public health.

Keywords: resident health conditions; climate change; eco-efficiency; empirical evidence; Sensitivity Evaluation with Support Vector Machines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/23/12842/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/23/12842/ (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:18:y:2021:i:23:p:12842-:d:695944

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 ().