Population Agglomeration And Urban Environmental Issues

There is an illusion that urban population growth leads to more serious pollution.This paper analyzes the relationship between urban population and pollution in macro and micro aspects respectively.From the macro perspective,the author constructs the urban environment panel data from 2005 to 2013.The results show a scale effect of the urban population on the amount of pollutants emitted by both factories and households,which reduces per capita emissions.After controlling for other indicators of economic development,there is no statistically significant correlation between population scale and the pollution indicators.From the micro perspective,by using the pollution data of the National Key Monitoring Enterprises from 2014-2016 and individual CGSS data in 2013,this paper finds that urban scale can also indirectly affects environment by changing the behavior of enterprises and residents in the city.In the process of population agglomeration,enterprises can increase the efficiency of pollution emission,and even reduce the amount of pollutants discharged by scale advantages in production.And their efficiency and technology of pollution abatement are relatively higher.In addition,since residents in large cities on average perform better in environmental protection,new immigrants would be affected by native residents through peer effects and thus raise levels of environmentally protective behaviors and knowledge.And this peer effects are verified to be more considerable in larger cities.Therefore,from the national perspective,the development of large cities is conducive to achieve our environmental goals.Facing the increasing number of migrants,governments of large cities should actively respond to the challenges brought by growing urban population to the environment by adjusting the production and life style,increasing the level of technology and management,promoting the integration of migrants,instead of simply controlling the population.