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What contributes to the regional inequality of haze pollution in China? Evidence from quantile regression and Shapley value decomposition

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Abstract

Against the increasingly serious haze pollution in China, this paper is to compare the impacts of different factors on haze pollution in different regions, and understand the causes of regional inequality of haze pollution. In doing so, quantile regression and regression-based Shapley value decomposition are employed in this paper. The main results are as follows. (1) Population density and industrialization level have positive impacts on haze pollution, while economic development negatively influences haze pollution, however, the impact of environmental regulation on haze pollution is ineffective. (2) With quantile increasing, the effect of foreign direct investment on haze pollution changes from positive to negative, and the influence of energy intensity on haze pollution changes from negative to positive. (3) The decomposition results specify that the regional inequality in population density is the main cause of the regional disparities of haze pollution. The inequalities in industrialization level and regional factors are also important reasons, and the contribution of energy intensity cannot be ignored either. The regional gap of economic development is conducive to reducing the regional disparities of haze pollution.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 71974188 and 71573254), Humanities and Social Sciences Special Research Fund of Ministry of Education in China (Research on Talents Training for Engineering Science and Technology, Grant No. 19JDGC011), Jiangsu Funds for Social Science (Grant No. 17JDB004), and Jiangsu Education Science Project (Grant No. B-b/2015/01/027).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, 221116, People’s Republic of China

    Feng Dong, Bolin Yu, Yuling Pan & Yifei Hua

  2. School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, People’s Republic of China

    Bolin Yu

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  1. Feng Dong
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  2. Bolin Yu
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Correspondence to Feng Dong or Bolin Yu.

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Dong, F., Yu, B., Pan, Y. et al. What contributes to the regional inequality of haze pollution in China? Evidence from quantile regression and Shapley value decomposition. Environ Sci Pollut Res 27, 17093–17108 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-07929-8

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