A Study Of Factors Influencing China’s Carbon Dioxide Emissions Using Spatial Multilevel Panel Data

With the rapid development of China’s economy,not only the energy consumption is increasing rapidly and the industrialization process is accelerating,but also the carbon dioxide emissions are increasing,which makes the environmental problem becoming more and more serious.The relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and its influencing factors has become a hot topic in both domestic and foreign scholars.Time series analysis and panel data model are used frequently in the literature,but most of them ignored the spatial correlation of the factors,and didn’t take the nested hierarchy effect of data into consideration.This paper uses the multi-level panel data model to study the influencing factors of carbon dioxide emissions in China and provide policy recommendations.This paper uses the 1995-2016 economic statistical data to construct multi-level panel data model,taking both the spatial correlation and the nested hierarchy effect of the "time-provinces-area" level data into consideration,discussing the influencing factors of China’s carbon dioxide emissions.The results show that China’s carbon dioxide emissions have the characteristics of large base and fast growth.In 2016,carbon dioxide emissions are 3.27 times that of 1995,and there is significant spatial correlation and spatial clustering.The empirical results show that the spatial multi-level panel data model of China’s carbon dioxide emissions is superior to the ordinary panel data model and spatial error model,which means it has better fitting and robustness.Also,the spatial correlation and the nested hierarchy effect cannot be neglected.Economic growth,energy structure,industrial structure and the level of financial development are the main influencing factors of China’s carbon dioxide emissions.The results prove that there is an inverted u-shaped EKC curve relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and per capita GDP of China,and the turning point is about 96859 yuan.Energy structure,industrial structure and the level of financial development have positive relationship with China’s carbon dioxide emissions,while the influence of foreign trade level is not significant.