| Since the Reform and Opening-up,China’s economic development and urbanization has made remarkable achievements.During the 36 years from 1978 to 2013,the average annual GDP growth rate reached 9.6%,which was called "growth miracle"’ and the urbanization rate increased from 17.92%to 53.70%,an average annual growth of 1.02%.With the rapid development of economic and urbanization comes the excessive consumption of resources and the destruction of the ecological environment,which poses a huge threat to human health and the ecological environment.Especially in the past two years,environmental pollution has spread rapidly from the economically developed eastern and southern regions to the mid-western and northern regions.The emergence of national haze weather has exposed the seriousness of environmental pollution and the fragility of ecology at present.And a large number of epidemiological investigation and toxicology research also confirmed that environmental pollution can cause acute human intoxication,chronic hazards and even become the bane to public nuisance disease.Furthermore,it has long-term effects such as mutations,carcinogenicity,teratogenicity,reproductive disorders,which endangering the health,survival and development of contemporary and future generations.It can be seen that while maintaining sustained economic growth and promoting the development of urbanization,it is imminent to protect the environment and reduce pollutant emissions.The Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee clearly pointed out that we must deepen the ecological environment management reform and should accelerate system building to promote ecological progress.The promulgation and implementation of the revision of Environmental Protection Law also fully demonstrated our determination to improve the environment and control pollution.Based on the previous research results,this paper theoretically analyzes the influencing mechanism of urbanization and institutional arrangement on regional environmental pollution.On the basis of measuring regional environmental pollution,this paper studies the spatial-temporal evolution law,spatial spillover effect and convergence of environmental pollution.According to Chinese provincial panel data,this paper analyzes the influence of urbanization and institutional arrangement on regional environmental pollution by using the latest development of spatial econometric model and new environmental Kuznets model in recent years.And then we analyze the different institutional arrangements on the environmental pollution in the process of urbanization by the introduction of the cross and double threshold effect model.Based on the above theoretical and empirical research,this paper puts forward policy recommendations that promote the optimization of environment in the process of urbanization through the reform of the system.Firstly,this paper evaluates the regional environmental pollution level of 30 provinces and cities in China by using the entropy method,and discusses the spatial-temporal evolution law of regional environmental pollution.On this basis,this paper analyzes the spatial spillover effect and convergence of regional environmental pollution.The results show that China’s environmental pollution has gradually increased in 16 years from 1998 to 2013,and there are big differences between the eastern,middle and western regions,with the highest in the eastern region and the lowest in the west.Over the past 16 years,the spatial distribution of inter-provincial environmental pollution has changed little,and the regional distribution is relatively obvious,showing obvious "path-dependence" characteristics and forming three different agglomeration areas including high pollution,moderate pollution and low pollution.The inter-provincial environmental pollution spillover effect is more obvious,and the spatial lag coefficient is the largest in the mid-western region while smallest in the east.The spillover effect of the environmental pollution presents a tendency that increases at the beginning and then decrease slowly with the increase of the spatial distance,and the peak is mainly in the vicinity of 600 km.The regional environmental pollution has β-absolute convergence,and there is no β-convergence in the eastern and middle regions,while the western region shows a typical "club convergence".Secondly,this paper analyzes the influence of urbanization on regional environmental pollution and regional differences.The study finds that,for the whole country,the impact of urbanization on regional environmental pollution showed the characteristics of inverted N-shaped curve.And for the three regions,the urbanization rate of environmental pollution in the eastern and western regions indicates an inverted U-shaped curve,while the middle region shows the U-shaped curve,but the three regions are in the stage that environmental pollution is increasing with the level of urbanization promoted.Thirdly,this paper analyzes the influence of institutional arrangement on environmental pollution.It is found that the effects of property right system,distribution pattern and the open economy on environmental pollution are significant negative,the environment system on environmental pollution is significant positive,and market system is not significant.The EKC curves are inverted U-shaped in the national,eastern and western regions,while U-shaped in the middle,and the turning points of the EKC curves are different in each regions.Most provinces and cities in China are still in the rising stage of the EKC curve.The national property rights system,distribution patterns and the environmental institution can make the inverted U-shaped EKC curve moving to the left,and the turning point is reached ahead of time.The market institution can make the U-shaped curve moving to the right,and the turning point is delayed to reach.The introduction of economic opening makes the environment EKC curve showing what shape not clear.There are obvious differences in the shape and turning point of the EKC curve under different institutional arrangement in eastern,middle and western regions.Finally,the paper analyzes the influence of institutional arrangement on the environmental pollution in the process of urbanization.It is found that the effect of urbanization on environmental pollution and the role of property rights institution,market institution and economic opening on environmental pollution are weakened each other in each relationship.Adding the interaction term of environmental institution and urbanization makes the coefficient of urbanization level become not significant,while the coefficient of the interaction term become significantly negative.It is indicated that the influence of environmental institution on the environmental effect of urbanization is great,while the influence of distribution pattern is not clear.At the same time,through the analysis of the threshold panel model,it is found that the impact of the urbanization level on regional environmental pollution presents a significant interval effect in different institutional arrangements.When the comprehensive level of institutional arrangement is low,the impact of urbanization level on the regional environmental pollution presents a positive effect.And with the gradual improvement of the institutional arrangement,the positive effect is weakened.When the institutional arrangement reaches to an extreme value,the impact of urban development on environmental pollution begins to change from positive to negative. |
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