Whether Openness and Inclusiveness Exacerbates Urban Pollution: Evidence from China
Publication: Journal of Urban Planning and Development
Volume 148, Issue 3
Abstract
In the context of economic globalization and social integration, the openness of the economy and the inclusiveness of the population play key roles in the development of regions and cities. Based on panel data from 259 prefecture-level cities in China from 2006 to 2013, the present study explored whether openness and inclusiveness exacerbated the level of urban pollution. The research constructed econometric models and found significant spatial autocorrelations for three pollutant emissions. Economic openness had an inverted U-shaped effect on the discharge of industrial wastewater but an inhibitory effect on the emission of industrial sulfur dioxide and industrial smoke. Population inclusiveness also significantly reduced the emission of these three pollutants. The present study showed that openness and inclusiveness did not exacerbate pollution but contributed to an improvement in the urban environment, which provided important guidance for pollution control and development planning in cities.
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Acknowledgments
The authors are highly indebted to Dr. Feng and Dr. Yang for their valuable comments on the earlier draft of this paper. Moreover, this study is supported by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. JUSRP121095; Recipient: Zhenyu Jiang), the General Project of Philosophy and Social Science Research in Jiangsu Universities (Grant No. 2021SJA0869; Recipient: Zhenyu Jiang), and the Talent Project of Jiangsu “Double Innovation” (Grant No. JSSCBS20210824; Recipient: Zhenyu Jiang). The authors wish to thank the relevant departments for their funding. The authors' contributions are as follows: Zhenyu Jiang: writing the original draft; writing the review; and editing, visualization, and developing software. Zhubo Li: writing the original draft, doing the formal analysis, handling data, and preparing the methodology. Zongjun Wang: performing modification and optimization. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Journal of Urban Planning and Development
Volume 148 • Issue 3 • September 2022
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© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Mar 17, 2021
Accepted: Jan 4, 2022
Published online: May 3, 2022
Published in print: Sep 1, 2022
Discussion open until: Oct 3, 2022
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