Technological Innovation,Industrial Agglomeration And Environmental Pollution

Since the reform and opening-up,the economy of C hina has achieved rapid development,but the contradiction between economic development and environmental pollution is increasingly prominent.The Yangtze River Economic Belt is facing severe environmental pollution at present.How to promote environmental pollution control via technological innovation and industrial agglomeration is of great significance to the green development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt.Firstly,this paper reviewed the academic re search on the relationship between technological innovation,industrial agglomeration and environmental pollution,and sorted out the theoretical mechanism among them.After that,it investigated the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of tec hnological innovation,industrial agglomeration and environmental pollution by using the panel data of 11provincial(municipal)level of Yangtze River Economic Belt.Finally,the panel data model is constructed to analyze the relationship between technolo gical innovation,industrial agglomeration and environmental pollution.The results of research show that,In terms of theoretic mechanism.The impact of industrial agglomeration on technological innovation varies with the degree of agglomeration,which made the pollution reduction effect of technological innovation is inevitably influenced by industrial agglomeration regulation.Specifically,the reasonable industrial agglomeration will strengthen the inhibition of environmental pollution by technological innovation through the ways of scale economy,knownledge spillover,division of labor and so on,that is size effect.The excessive industrial agglomeration will weaken the pollution reduction effect of technological innovation via the ways of reducing allocative efficiency of resources,vicious competition,industrial isomorphism and so on,that is crowding effect.In terms of spatial and temporal distribution characteristic,(1)the investment in technological innovation has been largely enhanced,the output of technological innovation is increasing,the application of technological innovation has been highlighted,and technological innovation shows a good development trend.However,the technological innovation gap between regions is obvious and enlarged constantly.(2)The proportion of industry is continually dropping,the level of industrial agglomeration remains stable,the industrial structure has been optimized constantly,and the trend of industrial upgrading is strengthened increasingly.There are similar characteristics of industrial development and agglomeration among regions,but the industrial upgrading in the lower reaches is better than that in the middle and upper reaches.(3)There is a strongly spatial and temporal variability in environmental pollution,the emission of sulfur dioxide and waste water increases first and then decreases,and dust emission presents the state of fluctuating.Due to the economic and social development gap between regions,the middle and upper reaches of the regio n are facing higher pollution control difficulty.The empirical study indicates that(1)There is an inverted u-shaped curve between technological innovation and environmental pollution,technological innovation can improve environmental pollution in the long run.To be specific,the input of technological innovation has a direct promoting effect on pollution reduction,while the output and application of technological innovation have a significant inverted-U relation with environmental pollution.There is only a linear relation between the input and output of technological innovation and environmental pollution in the middle and upper reaches and the lower reaches,and a significant inverted U-shaped relation between the application of technological innovation and environmental pollution.(2)Industrial agglomeration indirectly impacts on environmental pollution via technological innovation,in the early stage of industrial agglomeration,industrial agglomeration improve technological innovation via size effect,so as to improve environmental pollution.With the further improvement of agglomeration level,the pollution reduction effect of technological innovation will be enhanced.However,when the degree of industrial agglomeration exceeds the corresponding critical value,excessive industrial agglomeration will weaken the effect of technological innovation on environmental pollution reduction,resulting in crowding effect,which indicates that only by maintaining a reasonable level of industrial agglomeration can technological innovation achieve the best effect on environmental pollution reduction.