Too Big or Too Small? The Threshold Effects of City Size on Regional Pollution in China

Xiong Chen and Wencui Du
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Xiong Chen: College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 211106, China
Wencui Du: School of Economics, Capital University of Economics and Business, Beijing 100070, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 4, 1-21

Abstract: The relationship between urban agglomeration and environmental pollution was checked using the balanced panel data of 285 cities in China from 2003 to 2016 and applying the fixed-effect model and the threshold effect model. This showed that: (1) the relationship between urban agglomeration (represented by city size) and environmental pollution is not linear but an inverted U-shape. As long as the GDP is less than 800,370 million RMB, the expansion of city size is not conducive to reducing pollutant emissions. When GDP is less than 41,641 million RMB, the influence of city expansion on environmental pollution is relatively less. When GDP is higher than 800,370 million RMB, the city expansion may reduce pollutant emission. (2) The city size is not too big but is in fact too small. Only 18 cities experienced the inverted U-shape with the expansion of their city size, causing the gas and water pollutant emissions to decrease. (3) For cities in an urban agglomeration, environmental pollution can be reduced by expanding the city size through coordinated development of urban agglomeration. In conclusion, for most large cities in urban agglomerations in China, the city size is not too large but too small.

Keywords: city size; environmental pollution; threshold effect model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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