Examining Determinants of CO 2 Emissions in 73 Cities in China

Haitao Zheng, Jie Hu, Rong Guan and Shanshan Wang
Additional contact information
Jie Hu: School of Economics and Management, Beihang Univerisity, Beijing 100191, China
Rong Guan: School of Statistics and Mathematics, Central Univeristy of Finance and Economics, Beijing 100081, China
Shanshan Wang: School of Economics and Management, Beihang Univerisity, Beijing 100191, China

Sustainability, 2016, vol. 8, issue 12, 1-17

Abstract: Issues concerning which factors that influence carbon dioxide emission, and which administrative measures should be imposed to reduce carbon emission in Chinese cities, have been on the agenda in cities’ policy-making. Yet little literature has studied this topic from the city level. This paper first measures CO 2 emission of 73 Chinese cities. We find heterogeneity embedded in the cross-city distribution of CO 2 emission per capita and a nonlinear structure in the relationship between carbon emission and GDP per capita. To describe such multimodality and examine the determinants of CO 2 emission in these cities, this article applies a linear mixed effect model covering the quadratic term of GDP per capita to extend the stochastic impact by regression on population, affluence, and technology (STIRPAT) model. The empirical results demonstrate that population size, secondary industry proportion, energy consumption structure, urbanization level and economic level have generally shown a positive influence on CO 2 emissions in Chinese cities. However, the urbanization level is of no significance. The phenomenon of the environmental Kuznets curve varies across Chinese cities, according to which three city groups are formed. Specific policy recommendations are given to each city group in light of their unique influencing modes on carbon emissions.

Keywords: carbon dioxide emission; extended STIRPAT model; linear mixed effect model; environmental kuznets curve (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/12/1296/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/12/1296/ (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:8:y:2016:i:12:p:1296-:d:84815

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 ().