Does industrial relocation alleviate environmental pollution? A mathematical economics analysis

Mingquan Li () and Qi Wang ()
Additional contact information
Mingquan Li: Beihang University
Qi Wang: Peking University

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, 2020, vol. 22, issue 5, No 40, 4673-4698

Abstract: Abstract Industrial relocation and its environmental impact attract widespread attention. We incorporated environmental elements into the decision-making framework of industrial relocation and developed a mathematical economics model. With this model, we investigated the impact of environmental regulation on industrial relocation; we also compared the environmental impact after relocation with that before relocation. We found that regulation can affect relocation, but prerequisites exist. Some factors such as pollutant generation factor, pollutant treatment cost factor, and relocation cost are indispensable components of the prerequisites. We also found that impacts of regulation on relocations of pollution-intensive industries (PIIs) and clean industries are different, and pollutant generation factor and relocation cost are two critical factors leading to this difference. This result indicates that environmental regulation does not necessarily lead to a relocation of PIIs. Total amount and intensity of pollutant emissions increase after relocation, and the extent of increase is positively correlated with the regulation in the home country and negatively correlated with that in the host country. This result reveals that industrial relocation alleviates home country’s environmental pollution in the sacrifice of host country’s environment through emissions leakage. This research yields essential considerations in policy making of industrial relocation.

Keywords: Industrial relocation; Environmental regulation; Environmental impact; Mathematical economics analysis; Emissions leakage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10668-019-00403-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:endesu:v:22:y:2020:i:5:d:10.1007_s10668-019-00403-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10668

DOI: 10.1007/s10668-019-00403-7

Access Statistics for this article

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development is currently edited by Luc Hens

More articles in Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().