Investigating the Influence of a New Ride-Hailing Policy on Air Quality Using Regression Discontinuity Design
Publication: Journal of Urban Planning and Development
Volume 149, Issue 1
Abstract
With the increase in the number of ride-hailing, traffic congestion and environmental pollution have been exacerbated. A new ride-hailing policy was formed as a means of administrative control to reduce the negative externalities. However, the improvement in air quality caused by the new ride-hailing policy has not been effectively verified. This study employed regression discontinuity design (RDD) to explore the causal relationship between the air quality in Beijing and the new ride-hailing policy to reduce the endogeneity problems. The main results show that the implementation of the new policy reduces air quality index (AQI), particulate matter 10 (PM10), and ozone (O3) by 14%, 12%, and 16%, respectively, in the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis. After applying the RDD, this study finds that the implementation of the new policy reduces AQI, PM10, and O3 by 43%, 30%, and 42%, respectively. The regression value of RDD is higher than that of OLS regression. Additionally, the robustness test reveals that RDD is reasonable. The findings suggest that the implementation of the new ride-hailing policy exerts an improvement effect on air quality. Policy implications to further promote the new ride-hailing policy are hence discussed.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71974024) and Fundamental Research Funds of the Dalian University of Technology (Grant No. DUT21RW209).
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Urban Planning and Development
Volume 149 • Issue 1 • March 2023
Copyright
© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 20, 2022
Accepted: Oct 20, 2022
Published online: Dec 13, 2022
Published in print: Mar 1, 2023
Discussion open until: May 13, 2023
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Air pollution
- Air quality
- Air traffic
- Air transportation
- Analysis (by type)
- Design (by type)
- Discontinuities
- Engineering fundamentals
- Environmental engineering
- Highway and road design
- Infrastructure
- Mathematical functions
- Mathematics
- Methodology (by type)
- Pollution
- Regression analysis
- Research methods (by type)
- Statistical analysis (by type)
- Traffic congestion
- Traffic engineering
- Traffic management
- Transportation engineering
- Verification
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