Environmental Concerns,haze Pollution And Inclusive Green Growth In Chinese Cities

The world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century.The spread of COVID-19 has made the sluggish global economy even worse.The trade war between China and the United States and the EU sanctions have increased the uncertainty of the economic environment.As an important economy in the world economy,China is faced with unprecedented opportunities and challenges in the evolution of the global economic pattern.In the 42 years since reform and opening up,with rapid industrialization and urbanization,China’s economy has grown at an average annual rate of 9.5% to become the fastest growing country in the world.However,with the disappearance of resources and demographic dividend,the disadvantages of the extensive economic growth mode gradually appear,especially the increasingly serious environmental pollution,such as "Ten Haze" and "Haze Lock City" have attracted attention from all sides.At present,how to transform the mode of economic growth in China and how to explore the win-win path between environmental protection and economic growth has become an urgent demand for China to "break through the tight encirclement" to achieve inclusive green economic growth.Inclusive green growth is an inclusive economic development concept that takes into account both green and economic growth and regional differences.It provides a feasible way to solve the current development path selection problem.Based on the perspective of environmental concerns,this study explored whether Chinese cities can promote inclusive green growth by reducing haze pollution under environmental concerns,following the research thought of "identifying problems,proposing problems,analyzing mechanisms and exploring paths".Firstly,based on the quantitative word frequency analysis technology of text big data,a high-frequency and dynamic word frequency database of monthly government environmental concerns and daily media environmental concerns was created,and a data set integrating government and media environmental concerns,haze pollution and inclusive green growth was constructed.Secondly,in the face of the increasingly serious problem of "smog locked cities" in Chinese cities,this study used panel data from 287 cities for the period 2010–2018,and employed the Spatial Durbin model to identify the typical fact that haze pollution leads to "beggar-thy-neighbor" non-inclusive green growth,and analyze the transmission mechanism of multi-agent,multi-path cooperative direct governance of haze.and explore the feasible path of promoting inclusive green growth in Chinese cities from "beggar-thy-neighbor" to "neighborly" under the win-win perspective of "pollution reduction and haze reduction" and "quality and efficiency improvement".The main research contents and results of this paper were as follows:(1)To build a theoretical analysis framework of environmental concern,haze pollution and inclusive green growth in Chinese cities.On the basis of environmental concerns,haze pollution,the core concept of inclusive green growth and public goods in Chinese cities,"public opinion forces",collaborative governance,local government competition,environmental Kuznets curve and other theories,This study has constructed a comprehensive theoretical analysis framework and research hypothesis of haze pollution and inclusive green growth of Chinese cities under the concern of the government and media environment,which provided a rigorous and rigorous theoretical basis for the study of this paper.(2)Based on text big data,the measurement tools of development environment concern were quantitatively analyzed,and the evolution characteristics of environment concern strategy were clarified.Based on text big data quantitative analysis and web spider technology,the evolution and phase characteristics of air pollution prevention and control policies were clarified,and the measurement tool of environmental concern index of government and media was developed to describe its size,direction and spatial evolution path.The findings:(1)The evolution of air pollution policy has gone through the initial stage,initial formation stage,development and reform stage,and the differentiation promotion stage;(2)The environmental concerns of the government and media were highly consistent with the introduction of air pollution prevention and control policies and the occurrence of environmental problems,and with the extension of time,the highhigh agglomeration and low-low agglomeration were increasingly prominent.(3)Haze pollution,environmental concerns of the government and media had a highly specific coupling and coordination effect on the spatial pattern evolution,and shown a significant spatial contraction trend over time,which provided provides reliable policy and data support for the research on multi-agent and multi-path collaborative treatment of haze effect and promotion of inclusive green growth.(3)To describe the spatial evolution characteristics of haze pollution and identify the genetic mechanism of haze pollution.In this study,we combined inverse distance weighted interpolation(IDW)with spatial analysis method to topologically transform urban PM2.5 monitoring points into a regional set,and dynamically delineated the spatiotemporal evolution path and distribution pattern of urban haze pollution in China from 2000 to 2018.The results showed:(1)Haze pollution on the time evolution was the evolution of the "low-high-low" trend,on the spatial pattern was from "southwest" to "northeast" gather momentum,geographically shown "heavier in the north and lighter in the south,higher in the east and lower in the west",in a quarterly perspective on a winter bad summer good effect,after the first drop on monthly "U" type trend of rise,on the whole area formed a beijing-tianjin-hebei as the axis,a concentrated core area radiating to the periphery;(2)Although natural factors had a certain impact on haze pollution,in the final analysis,economic and social activities had a profound impact on haze pollution in China.Each influencing factor had positive and negative effects on PM2.5,and the degree of influence had significant spatial heterogeneity,which further deepened the understanding of the spatial evolution and causes of haze pollution.(4)To develop a measurement tool for inclusive green growth of Chinese cities and describe the evolution characteristics of spatial pattern.Based on the fixed base range entropy weight method,the index of inclusive green growth of Chinese cities composed of 41 specific indicators of 3 subsystems was measured.Further,the spatial exploratory analysis tool was used to describe the spatial pattern evolution of inclusive green growth in 3 regions,19 urban agglomerations and3 subsystems.The results showed that:(1)The inclusive green growth of Chinese cities increased at an average annual growth rate of 1.24%.Economic development level was the core driving force for inclusive green growth of Chinese cities at and above the prefectural level from 2010 to 2018.(2)On the whole,the inclusive green growth of Chinese cities shown an intensive spatial pattern evolution trend of shrinking along the long axis and expanding along the short axis.There were unbalanced and inadequate phenomena among regions,urban agglomerations and the three subsystems,but they gradually shrank over time,and the overall spatial pattern evolved in an intensive spatial pattern of contraction along the long axis and expansion along the short axis,which laid a realistic basis for the following research.(5)To identify the fact that haze pollution was a typical feature of "beggar-thyneighbor" for inclusive green growth in Chinese cities.Based on dynamic spatial econometric analysis to investigate the impact of haze pollution on inclusive green growth.the results were as follows:(1)Haze pollution has created a “beggar-thy-neighbor” development model for inclusive green growth in China’s cities;(2)In the short term,haze pollution has generated a "pollution dividend" for inclusive green growth of Chinese cities.However,in the long term,this extensive economic development model of "pollution first,treatment later" was not conducive to inclusive,green and sustainable development of Chinese cities.(3)The influence of haze pollution on economic development level,social equity level and green sustainability level is further investigated.It was found that there was a significant inverted "U" shaped relationship between the influence of haze pollution on economic development level,social equity level and green sustainability level in both direct and indirect effects.This provided a factual basis for the subsequent discussion on the influence of environmental concerns of the government and media on haze control and inclusive growth.(6)How to realize the mode transformation from "competition to bottom","competition to top" and "collaborative governance" under the multi-subject and multipath haze governance behavior.Based on the dynamic spatial econometric model,this paper focuses on the transmission mechanism of multi-agent and multi-path collaborative haze governance under the environmental concern.Confirms that:(1)Haze pollution was a dynamic and gradual accumulation process,which indicated that haze control was a long-term and arduous systematic task,which required cooperation among all stakeholders and departments;(2)The government’s haze pollution control had "incomplete implementation" and other "bottom-chasing competition" behaviors,which lead to the relatively low efficiency of the haze pollution control that the government was concerned about;(3)The coercive and supervision effect of media attention could realize the transformation of haze pollution from "race to the bottom" to "race to the top";(4)Compared with the "top-down" government governance and the "bottom-up" media attention,the "combination of upper and lower" coordinated governance could better improved the speed of the transformation of haze pollution from "beggar-thyneighbor" to "neighborly";(5)Further empirical findings shown that haze pollution not only had the multi-agent cooperative governance effect with the participation of the government and the media,but also had the multi-path cooperative governance effect through "environmental concern-industrial structure adjustment-haze pollution","environmental concern-green technology innovation-haze pollution" and "environmental concern-FDI-haze pollution".(7)Under the path of coordinated governance of haze pollution,the paper explored the upgrading path of realizing inclusive green growth in Chinese cities from "beggarthy-neighbor" to "neighborly".Based on a dynamic spatial econometric model,this paper explored whether government and media environmental concerns and their synergistic effects can enhance the research on inclusive green growth of Chinese cities by reducing haze pollution? Empirical proof:(1)The environmental concerns of government and media and their synergies can promote the inclusive green growth of Chinese cities.Specifically,the synergistic effects > media environment concerns > government environment concerns.Further testing of the local and neighborhood effects found that only the synergistic effects had significant positive correlation,and the local effect was greater than the neighborhood effect;(2)The effect of haze pollution as an intermediary mechanism exists in the path of environmental concerns of the government and media and their synergistic effects on inclusive green growth of Chinese cities;(3)Compared with the single effect of the government’s environmental concern and media’s environmental concern,the synergistic optimization effect of the government and media’s "combination of upper and lower" could better achieved haze control,and thus promoted the inclusive green development of "neighborhood harmony" between cities.It also further shown that a higher level of media attention to the environment can force the government to implement more intensive environmental governance policies,in order to promote the earlier coming of the "Porter Hypothesis" effect,which reflected the synergistic optimization effect of the "combination of the upper and lower" between the government and the media,namely the "1+1>2" effect.Based on the constraint perspective of environmental concern,this paper constructs the environmental concern index of government and media,which enriches the research perspective of multi-agent and multi-path collaborative participation in environmental governance.In addition,the relevant conclusions are not only the review and reflection of the current environmental governance dilemma,but also an exploration of effective ways to achieve haze governance and inclusive green growth.Meanwhile,they also provide reference for decision-making for the reasonable regulation of the balance between economic development and environmental protection and the avoidance of "GDP worship".